Podcasts about Heian

This episode, we talk about two monumental projects that were started in this reign.  One was the historiographical project that likely led to the creation of the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki.  And then there was the start of the first permanent capital city:  the Fujiwara Capital. Listen to the episode and find more on our website:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-143   Rough Transcript   Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is Episode 143: Temmu's Monumental Projects     Ohoama sat astride his horse and looked out at the land in front of him.   He could still see the image of the rice fields, now long fallow, spreading out on the plain.  To the north, east, and west, he could see the mountains that would frame his vision.  As his ministers started to rattle off information about the next steps of the plan, Ohoama began to smile.  He thought of the reports his embassies to the Great Tang had brought back, about the great walled cities of the continent.  In his mind's eye, Ohoama envisioned something similar, rising up on the plain in front of him. There would be an earth and stone wall, surrounding the great city.  The gates would be grand, much like the temples, but on an even greater scale.  Houses would be packed in tight, each within their own walled compounds.  In the center painted red and white, with green accents, would be a palace to rival any other structure in the archipelago.  The people would stream in, and the city would be bustling with traffic. This was a new center, from which the power of Yamato would be projected across the islands and even to the continent.   Greetings everyone, and welcome back.  This episode we are still focused on the reign of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tennou, between the years 672 and 686. Last episode we talked about the Four Great Temples—or the Four National Temples.  Much of this episode was focused on the rise and spread of Buddhism as we see in the building of these national temples, but also on the changes that occurred as the relationship between Buddhism and the State evolved.  This was part of Ohoama's work to build up the State into something beyond what it had been in the past—or perhaps into something comparable to what they believed it to have been in the past.  After all, based on the size of the tomb mounds in the kofun period, it does seem that there was a peak of prosperity in the 5th century, around the time of Wakatakeru, aka Yuryaku Tennou, and then a decline, to the point that the lineage from Wohodo, aka Keitai Tennou, seemed to have come in during a time when they were rebuilding Yamato power and authority. This episode we are going to talk about two projects that Ohoama kicked off during his reign.  He wouldn't see the completion of either one, since both took multiple decades to complete, but both focused on linking the past and the future.  The first we'll talk about is a new attempt to gather historical documents and records—the last time that was done was in the time of Kashikiya Hime, over 50 years ago.  That was during the height of Soga power.  Since then a lot had changed, and presumably there were even more stories and records that had been written down.  Plus the tide had changed.  So they needed to update—and maybe even correct—the historical record. But beyond that, there was a greater goal: Ohoama and his court also needed to make sure that the past was something that they wanted to go back to, among other things. The other thing we are going to discuss is the start of a project to build a brand new capital city.  And when we talk a bout city, we really mean a city.  This was a massive undertaking, likely unlike anything that we've seen so far.  Sure, there had been monumental building projects, but this was something that was going to take a lot more work - how much more monumental could you get than a new city?  And it would create a physical environment that would be the embodiment of the new centralization of power and authority, and the new state that Ohoama was building, with his administration—and Yamato—at the center.   Let's start with the big ones.  First and foremost, we have the entry from the 17th day of the 3rd month of the 681.  Ohoama gave a decree from the Daigokuden to commit to writing a Chronicle of the sovereigns and various matters of high antiquity.  Bentley translates this as saying that they were to record and confirm the Teiki, which Aston translated as the Chronicle of the Sovereigns, and various accounts of ancient times.  This task was given out to a slew of individuals, including the Royal Princes Kawashima and Osakabe; the Princes Hirose, Takeda, Kuwada, and Mino; as well as Kamitsukenu no Kimi no Michichi, Imbe no Muraji no Kobito, Adzumi no Muraji no Inashiki, Naniwa no Muraji no Ohogata, Nakatomi no Muraji no Ohoshima, and Heguri no Omi no Kobito.  Ohoshima and Kobito were specifically chosen as the scribes for this effort.  We aren't told what work was started at this time.  Aston, in his translation of the Nihon Shoki, assumes that this is the start of the Kojiki.  Bentley notes that this is the first in a variety of records about gathering the various records, including gathering records from the various families, and eventually even records from the various provinces.  And I think we can see why.  Legitimizing a new state and a new way of doing things often means ensuring that you have control of the narrative.  Today, that often means doing what you can to control media and the stories that are in the national consciousness.  In Ohoama's day, I'd argue that narrative was more about the various written sources, and how they were presented.  After all, many of the rituals and evidence that we are looking at would rely on the past to understand the present.  The various family records would not only tell of how those families came to be, but would have important information about what else was going on, and how that was presented could determine whether something was going to be seen as auspicious, or otherwise.  Even without getting rid of those records, it would be important to have the official, State narrative conform to the Truth that the state was attempting to implement. Ultimately, there is no way to know, exactly, how everything happened.  If the Nihon Shoki had a preface, it has been lost.  The Kojiki, for its part, does have a preface, and it points to an origin in the reign of Ohoama—known as the sovereign of Kiyomihara.  In there we are told that the sovereign had a complaint—that the Teiki and Honji, that is the chronicles of the sovereigns and the various other stories and legends, that had been handed down by various houses had come to differ from the truth.  They said they had many falsehoods, which likely meant that they just didn't match the Truth that the State was trying to push.  Thus  they wanted to create a so-called "true" version to pass down. This task was given to 28 year old Hieda no Are.  It says they were intelligent and had an incredible memory.  They studied all of the sources, and the work continued beyond the reign of Ohoama.  Later, in 711 CE, during the reign of Abe, aka Genmei Tennou, Oho no Yasumaro was given the task of writing down everything that Hieda no Are had learned.  The astute amongst you may have noticed that this mentions none of the individuals mentioned in the Nihon Shoki.  Nor does the Nihon Shoki mention anything about Hieda no Are.  So was this a separate effort, or all part of the same thing?  Was Are using the materials collected by  the project? As you may recall, we left the Kojiki behind some time ago, since it formally ends with the reign of Kashikiya hime, aka Suiko Tennou, but realistically it ended with Wohodo, aka Keitai Tennou—after that point there are just lists of the various heirs.  As such, there is some speculation that this was originally built off of earlier histories, perhaps arranged during the Soga era. The general explanation for all of this is that Hieda no Are memorized the poems and stories, and then Yasumaro wrote them down.  Furthermore, though the language in the Kojiki does not express a particular gender, in the Edo period there was a theory that Hieda no Are was a woman, which is still a popular theory. Compare all of that to the Nihon Shoki.  Where the Kojiki was often light on details and ends with Suiko Tennou, the Nihon Shoki often includes different sources, specifically mentions some of them by name, and continues up through the year 697.  Furthermore, textual analysis of the Nihon Shoki suggests that it was a team effort, with multiple Chroniclers, and likely multiple teams of Chroniclers.   I have to admit, that sounds a lot more like the kind of thing that Ohoama was kicking off. We have an entry in the Shoku Nihongi, the work that follows the Nihon Shoki, that suggests 720 for the finished compilation of the Nihon Shoki.  So did it take from 681 to 720 to put together?  That is a really long project, with what were probably several generations of individuals working on it. Or should this be read in a broader sense?  Was this a historiographical project, as Bentley calls it, but one that did not, immediately, know the form it would take?  It isn't the first such project—we have histories of the royal lineage and other stories that were compiled previously—much of that attributed to Shotoku Taishi, but likely part of an earlier attempt by the court.  In fact, given that the Kojiki and Sendai Hongi both functionally end around the time of Kashikiya hime, that is probably because the official histories covered those periods.  Obviously, though, a lot had happened, and some of what was written might not fit the current narrative.  And so we see a project to gather and compile various sources.  While this project likely culminated in the projects of the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, I doubt that either work was necessarily part of the original vision.  Rather, it looks like the original vision was to collect what they could and then figure things out. It would have been after they started pulling the accounts together, reading them, and noticing the discrepancies that they would have needed to then edit them in such a way that they could tell a cohesive story.  That there are two separate compilations is definitely interesting.  I do suspect that Oho no Yasumaro was working from the efforts of Hieda no Are, either writing down something that had been largely captured in memory or perhaps finishing a project that Are had never completed.  The Nihon Shoki feels like it was a different set of teams, working together, but likely drawing from many of the same sources. And as to why we don't have the earlier sources?  I once heard it said that for books to be forgotten they didn't need to be banned—they just needed to fall out of circulation and no longer be copied anymore.  As new, presumably more detailed, works arose, it makes sense that older sources would not also be copied, as that information was presumably in the updated texts, and any information that wasn't brought over had been deemed counterfactual.  Even the Nihon Shoki risked falling into oblivion; the smaller and more digestible Kojiki was often more sought after.  The Kojiki generally presents a single story, and often uses characters phonetically, demonstrating how to read names and places.  And it just has a more story-like narrative to it.  The Nihon Shoki, comparatively, is dense, written in an old form of kanbun, often relying more on kanbun than on phonetic interpretations.  It was modeled on continental works, but as such it was never going to be as easy to read.  And so for a long time the Kojiki seems to have held pride of place for all but the most ardent scholars of history. Either way, I think that it is still fair to say that the record of 681 was key to the fact that we have this history, today, even if there was no way for Ohoama, at the time, to know just what form it would take. Another ambitious project that got started under Ohoama was the development of a new and permanent capital city. Up to this point we've talked about the various capitals of Yamato, but really it was more that we were talking about the palace compounds where the sovereign lived.  From the Makimuku Palace, where either Mimaki Iribiko or possibly even Himiko herself once held sway, to the latest palace, that of Kiyomihara, the sovereigns of Yamato were known by their palaces.  This is, in part, because for the longest time each successive sovereign would build a new palace after the previous sovereign passed away.  There are various reasons why this may have been the case, often connected to insular concepts of spiritual pollution brought on by the death of an individual, but also the practical consideration that the buildings, from what we can tell, were largely made of untreated wood.  That made them easier to erect, but also made them vulnerable to the elements, over time, and is probably one of the reasons that certain shrines, like the Shrine at Ise, similarly reconstitute themselves every 20 years or so. Furthermore, we talk about palaces, but we don't really talk about cities.  There were certainly large settlements—even going back to the Wei chronicles we see the mention of some 70 thousand households in the area of Yamateg.  It is likely that the Nara basin was filled with cultivated fields and many households.  Princes and noble households had their own compounds—remember that both Soga no Umako and Prince Umayado had compounds large enough that they could build temples on the compounds and have enough left over for their own palatial residences, as well.  However, these compounds were usually distributed in various areas, where those individuals presumably held some level of local control. It is unclear to me how exactly the early court functioned as far as housing individuals, and how often the court was "in session", as it were, with the noble houses.  Presumably they had local accommodations and weren't constantly traveling back and forth to the palace all the time.  We know that some houses sent individuals, men and women, to be palace attendants, even though they lived some distance away.  This was also likely a constraint on the Yamato court's influence in the early days. We do see the sovereign traveling, and various "temporary" palaces being provided.  I highly doubt that these were all built on the spot, and were likely conversions of existing residences, and similar lodging may have been available for elites when they traveled, though perhaps without such pomp and circumstance. What we don't really see in all of this, are anything resembling cities.  Now, the term "city" doesn't exactly have a single definition, but as I'm using it, I would note that we don't see large, permanent settlements of significant size that demonstrate the kind of larger civil planning that we would expect of such a settlement.  We certainly don't have cities in the way of the large settlements along the Yangzi and Yellow rivers. We talked some time back about the evolution of capital city layouts on the continent.  We mentioned that the early theoretical plan for a capital city was based on a square plan, itself divided into 9 square districts, with the central district constituting the palace.  This design works great on paper, but not so much in practice, especially with other considerations, such as the north-south orientation of most royal buildings.  And then there are geographic considerations.  In a place like Luoyang, this square concept was interrupted by the river and local topography.  Meanwhile, in Chang'an, they were able to attain a much more regular rectangular appearance.  Here, the court and the palace were placed in the center of the northernmost wall.  As such, most of the city was laid out to the south of the palace. In each case, however, these were large, planned cities with a grid of streets that defined the neighborhoods.  On each block were various private compounds, as well as the defined markets, temples, et cetera. The first possible attempt at anything like this may have been with the Toyosaki palace, in Naniwa.  There is some consideration that, given the size of the palace, there may have been streets and avenues that were built alongside it, with the intention of having a similar city layout.  If so, it isn't at all clear that it was ever implemented, and any evidence may have been destroyed by later construction on the site.  Then we have the Ohotsu palace, but that doesn't seem to be at the same scale as the Toyosaki palace—though it is possible that, again, we are missing some key evidence.  Nonetheless, the records don't really give us anything to suggest that these were large cities rather than just palaces. There is also the timeline.  While both the Toyosaki palace and the Ohotsu palace took years to build, they did not take the time and amount of manpower that would be needed to create a true capital city.  We can judge this based on what it took to build the new capital at Nihiki. This project gets kicked off in the 11th month of 676.  We are told that there was an intent to make the capital at Nihiki, so all of the rice-fields and gardens within the precincts, public and private property alike, were left fallow and became totally overgrown. This likely took some time.  The next time we see Nihiki is in the 3rd month of 682, when Prince Mino, a minister of the Household Department, and others, went there to examine the grounds.  At that point they apparently made the final decision to build the capital there.  Ohoama came out to visit later that same month. However, a year later, in the 12th month of 683, we are told that there was a decree for there to be multiple capitals and palaces in multiple sites, and they were going to make the Capital at Naniwa one of those places.  And so public functionaries were to go figure out places for houses.  So it wasn't just that they wanted to build one new, grand capital.  It sounds like they were planning to build two or three, so not just the one at Nihiki.  This is also where I have to wonder if the Toyosaki Palace was still being used as an administrative center, at the very least.  Or was it repurposed, as we saw that the Asuka palaces had been when the court moved to Ohotsu? This is further emphasized a few months later, when Prince Hirose and Ohotomo Yasumaro, at the head of a group of clerks, officials, artisans, and yin yang diviners were sent around the Home Provinces to try and divine sites suitable for a capital.  In addition, Prince Mino, Uneme no Oni no Tsukura, and others were sent to Shinano to see about setting up a capital there as well.  Perhaps this was inspired by the relationship between the two Tang capitals of Chang'an and Luoyang.  Or perhaps it was so that if one didn't work out another one might. Regardless, Nihiki seemed to be the primary target for this project, and in the third lunar month of 684 Ohoama visited the now barren grounds and decided on a place for the new palace.  A month later, Prince Mino and others returned with a map of Shinano, but there is no indication of where they might want to build another capital. After that, we don't hear anything more of Shinano or of a site in the Home Provinces.  We do hear one more thing about Naniwa, which we mentioned a couple of episodes back, and that is that in 686 there was a fire that burned down the palace at Naniwa, after which they seem to have abandoned that as a palace site.  And so we are left with the area of Nihiki. This project would take until the very end of 694 before it was ready.  In total, we are looking at a total of about 18 years—almost two decades, to build a new capital.  Some of this may have been the time spent researching other sites, but there also would have been significant time taken to clear and level.  This wasn't just fields—based on what we know, they were even taking down old kofun; we are later told about how they had to bury the bodies that were uncovered.  There was also probably a pause of some kind during the mourning period when Ohoama passed away.  And on top of it, this really was a big project.  It wasn't just building the palace, it was the roads, the infrastructure, and then all of the other construction—the city gates, the various private compounds, and more.  One can only imagine how much was being invested, especially if they were also looking at other sites and preparing them at the same time.  I suspect that they eventually abandoned the other sites when they realized just how big a project it really was that they were undertaking. Today we know that capital as Fujiwara-kyo, based on the name of the royal palace that was built there, and remarkably, we know where it was.  Excavations have revealed the site of the palace, and have given us an idea of the extent of the city:  It was designed as a square, roughly 5.3 kilometers, or 10 ri, on each side.  The square itself was interrupted by various terrain features, including the three holy mountains.  Based on archaeological evidence, the street grid was the first thing they laid out, and from what we can tell they were using the ideal Confucian layout as first dictated in the Zhouli, or Rites of Zhou.  This meant a square grid, with the palace in the center. Indeed, the palace was centered, due south of Mt. Miminashi, and you can still go and see the palace site, today.  When they went to build the palace, they actually had to effectively erase, or bury, the roads they had laid out.  They did the same thing for Yakushi-ji, or Yakushi-temple, when they built it as part of the city; one of the reasons we know it had to have been built after the roads were laid out.  We will definitely talk about this more when we get to that point of the Chronicles, but for now, know that the Fujiwara palace itself, based on excavations of the site, was massive.  The city itself would surpass both Heijo-kyo, at Nara, and Heian-kyo, in modern Kyoto.  And the palace was like the Toyosaki Naniwa palace on steroids.  It included all of the formal features of the Toyosaki Palace for running the government, but then enclosed that all in a larger compound with various buildings surrounding the court itself.  Overall, the entire site is massive.  This was meant as a capital to last for the ages. And yet, we have evidence that it was never completed.  For one thing, there is no evidence that a wall was ever erected around it—perhaps there was just no need, as relations with the mainland had calmed down, greatly.  But there is also evidence that parts of the palace, even, were not finished at the time that they abandoned it.  Fujiwara-kyo would only be occupied for about 16 years before a new capital was built—Heijo-kyo, in Nara.  There are various reasons as to why they abandoned what was clearly meant to be the first permanent capital city, and even with the move to a new city in Nara it would be clear that it was going to take the court a bit of time before they were ready to permanently settle down—at least a century or so. Based on all the evidence we have, and assuming this was the site of the eventual capital, Nihiki was the area of modern Kashihara just north of Asuka, between—and around—the mountains of Unebi, Miminashi, and Kagu.  If these mountains are familiar, they popped up several times much earlier in the Chronicles--Mostly in the Age of the Gods and in the reign of the mythical Iware-biko, aka Jimmu Tennou.  Yet these three mountains help to set out the boundaries of the capital city that was being built at this time. There is definitely some consideration that they were emphasized in the early parts  of the Chronicles—the mythical sections, which were bolstering the story of Amaterasu and the Heavenly Grandchild, setting up the founding myths for the dynasty.  Even though the Chronicles  were not completed until well after the court had moved out, the Fujiwara capital is the climax of the Nihon Shoki, which ends in 697, three years into life at the new palace.  And so we can assume that much of the early, critical editing of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki were done with the idea that this would be the new capital, and so it was woven into the histories, and had it continued as the capital, the very landscape would have recalled the stories of the divine origins of the Royal family and the state of Yamato itself.  This was the stage on which Ohoama's state was built.  He, and his successors, didn't just change the future path of the Yamato government.  They rearranged the physical and temporal environment, creating a world that centered them and their government.  I suspect that Ohoama didn't originally consider that these wouldn't be finished during his reign.  That said, he came to power in his 40s, only slightly younger than his brother, who had just died.  He would live to be 56 years old—a respectable age for male sovereigns, around that time.  From a quick glance, Naka no Oe was about 45 or 46 years old, while Karu lived to about 57 or 58.  Tamura only made it to 48.  The female sovereigns seem to have lasted longer, with Ohoama's mother surviving until she was 66 or 67 years old, and Kashikiya Hime made it to the ripe old age of 74.  That said, it is quite likely that he thought he would make it longer.  After all, look at all the merit he was accruing!  Still, he passed away before he could see these projects fully accomplished.  That would have to be left for the next reign—and even that wasn't enough.  The Fujiwara Capital would only be occupied for a short time before being abandoned about two reigns later, and the histories as we know them wouldn't be complete for three more reigns.  So given all of this, let's take another quick look at Ohoama himself and where he stands at this pivotal moment of Yamato history.When we look at how he is portrayed, Ohoama is generally lionized for the work he is said to have accomplished.  I would argue that he is the last of three major figures to whom are attributed most of the changes that resulted in the sinification of the Yamato government.  The first is prince Umayado, aka Shotoku Taishi, who is said to have written the 17 article constitution, the first rank system, and the introduction of Buddhism.  To be fair, these things—which may not have been exactly as recorded in the Chronicles—were likely products of the court as a whole.  Many people attribute more to Kashikiya Hime, aka Suiko Tennou, as well as Soga no Umako.  Of course, Soga no Umako wasn't a sovereign, or even a member of the royal family, and Kashikiya Hime, aka Suiko Tennou, seems to have likewise been discounted, at least later, possibly due to the fact that she is thought to have come to power more as a compromise candidate than anything else—she was the wife of a previous sovereign and niece to Soga no Umako.  Many modern scholars seem to focus more on the agency of Kashikiya Hime and suggest that she had more say than people tend to give her credit for.  That said, Shotoku Taishi seems to have been the legendary figure that was just real enough to ascribe success to.  That he died before he could assume the throne just meant that he didn't have too many problematic decisions of his own to apparently work around. The next major figure seems to be Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou.  Naka no Oe kicks off the period of Great Change, the Taika era, and is credited with a lot of the changes—though I can't help but notice that the formal sovereign, Naka no Oe's uncle, Karu, seems to have stuck with the new vision of the Toyosaki Palace and the administrative state while Naka no Oe and his mother moved back to the traditional capital.  And when Naka no Oe moved the capital to Ohotsu, he once again built a palace more closely aligned to what we see in Asuka than the one in Naniwa, which brings some questions about how the new court was operating.  But many of his reforms clearly were implemented, leveraging the new concepts of continental rulership to solidify the court's hegemony over the rest of the archipelago. Ohoama, as represented in the Chronicles, appears to be the culmination of these three.  He is building on top of what his brother had implemented through the last three reigns.  Some of what he did was consolidate what Naka no Oe had done, but there were also new creations, for which Ohoama is credited, even if most of the work was done outside of Ohoama's reign, but they were attributed to Ohoama, nonetheless.  Much of this was started later in Ohoama's reign, and even today there seem to be some questions about who did what.  Nonetheless, we can at least see how the Chroniclers were putting the story together. There are a lot of scholars that point to the fact that the bulk of the work of these projects would actually be laid out in the following reigns, and who suggest that individuals like the influential Uno no Sarara, who held the control of the government in Ohoama's final days, may have had a good deal more impact on how things turned out, ultimately.  In fact, they might even have been more properly termed her projects—there are some that wonder if some of the attributions to Ohoama were meant to bolster the authority of later decrees, but I don't really see a need for that, and it seems that there is enough evidence to suggest that these projects were begun in this period. All of this makes it somewhat ironic that by the time the narrative was consolidated and published to the court, things were in a much different place—literally.  The Fujiwara capital had been abandoned.  The court, temples, and the aristocracy had picked up stakes and moved north.  Fujiwara no Fuhito had come on the scene, and now his family was really taking off.  This was not the same world that the Chronicles had been designed around. And yet, that is what was produced.  Perhaps there is a reason that they ended where they did. From that point on, though, there were plenty of other projects to record what was happening.  Attempts to control the narrative would need to do a lot more.  We see things like the Sendai Kuji Hongi, with its alternative, and perhaps even subversive, focus on the Mononobe family.  And then later works like the Kogoshui, recording for all time the grievances of the Imbe against their rivals—for all the good that it would do.  With more people learning to write, it was no longer up to the State what did or did not get written down. But that has taken us well beyond the scope of this reign—and this episode, which we should probably be bringing to a close.  There are still some things here and there that I want to discuss about this reign—so the next episode may be more of a miscellany of various records that we haven't otherwise covered, so far.  Until then if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

Beckheim øker på lyttertallene, og utfordrer riksmediene. Mahmoud Abbas er på kongelig besøk i Norge, Hva skjer i Gaza, Eli Sharabi på Litteraturhuset, hvordan går det i Iran? Og Beckheim danker ut både VG, NRK og Aftenposten sine podcast. Live med Dr. Leif Knutsen. Dr. Leif Knutsen er økonom, og filolog med bakgrunn som konsulent og rådgiver, med doktorgrad i ingeniørvitenskap. Leif har fått publisert sine analyser i både norske og internasjonale medier, blant annet i The Times of Israel, hvor han omtales slik: «Leif Knutsen has observed, reflected, and written on Israeli and Jewish issues since the late 70's and has personal experience from Jewish life in the US and Norway.»Leif er selv jødisk og driver i dag nettstedet B'emet i Norge, en uavhengig medieplattform med fokus på jødisk liv, Israel, antisemittisme og relatert tematikk i en norsk kontekst. Platformen utfyller, nyanserer, korrigerer og kritiserer norskspråklig dekning av disse emnene.

La historia de Genji es una novela extensa y compleja que combina elementos de la narrativa romántica, la poesía y la crónica histórica. La obra está dividida en 54 capítulos y sigue la vida del príncipe Genji, así como la de sus descendientes, en el contexto de la corte imperial de Heian (actual Kioto). Murasaki Shikibu utiliza un estilo narrativo lírico y detallado, lleno de descripciones de la naturaleza, las emociones humanas y las complejidades de la vida cortesana. La obra es notable por su profundidad psicológica y su exploración de temas como el amor, la pérdida, la ambición y el paso del tiempo."Crónicas Lunares di Sun" es un podcast cultural presentado por Irving Sun, que abarca una variedad de temas, desde la literatura y análisis de libros hasta discusiones sobre actualidad y personajes históricos. Se difunde en múltiples plataformas como Ivoox, Apple Podcast, Spotify y YouTube, donde también ofrece contenido en video, incluyendo reflexiones sobre temas como la meditación y la filosofía teosófica. Los episodios exploran textos y conceptos complejos, buscando fomentar la reflexión y el autoconocimiento entre su audiencia, los "Lunares", quienes pueden interactuar y apoyar el programa a través de comentarios, redes sociales y donaciones. AVISO LEGAL: Los cuentos, poemas, fragmentos de novelas, ensayos y todo contenido literario que aparece en Crónicas Lunares di Sun podrían estar protegidos por derecho de autor (copyright). Si por alguna razón los propietarios no están conformes con el uso de ellos por favor escribirnos al correo electrónico cronicaslunares.sun@hotmail.com y nos encargaremos de borrarlo inmediatamente. Si te gusta lo que escuchas y deseas apoyarnos puedes dejar tu donación en PayPal, ahí nos encuentras como @IrvingSun  https://paypal.me/IrvingSun?country.x=MX&locale.x=es_XC  Síguenos en:  Telegram: Crónicas Lunares di Sun  ⁠Crónicas Lunares di Sun - YouTube⁠ ⁠https://t.me/joinchat/QFjDxu9fqR8uf3eR⁠  ⁠https://www.facebook.com/cronicalunar/?modal=admin_todo_tour⁠  ⁠Crónicas Lunares (@cronicaslunares.sun) • Fotos y videos de Instagram⁠  ⁠https://twitter.com/isun_g1⁠  ⁠https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy9lODVmOWY0L3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz⁠  ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/4x2gFdKw3FeoaAORteQomp⁠  https://mx.ivoox.com/es/s_p2_759303_1.html⁠ https://tunein.com/user/gnivrinavi/favorites⁠ ORTOLARRY:  - NORTE 9 #175 ESQ. OTE 164. COLONIA MOCTEZUMA SEGUNDA SECCION. CDMX - NORTE 17# 211-A COLONIA MOCTEZUMA SEGUNDA SECCION C.P 15530 ALCALDIA VENUSTIANO  Teléfonos: 5557860648, 5524158512. Whatsapp: 5561075125 

Che cos'è il “Periodo Heian”?E' il periodo che ha plasmato la cultura giapponese con la sua storia e con la sua mitologia e gli eroi; con la sua letteratura prospera, l'ascesa dei grandi clan che si contenderanno il potere, l'onnipotenza dei Fujiwara, ma anche la decadenza della corte imperiale e le calamità che colpiranno il popolo fanno parte di questo periodo.Se è questo che cercate, beh...vi invito caldamente a procedere con l'ascolto, vi aspetteranno 100 minuti di puro intrattenimento!Fuhamaru, la mascotte del Podcast, è disegnato da @bibidrakeartCerca il podcast sui social!https://www.facebook.com/podcastdelloshogunhttps://www.instagram.com/podcastdelloshogun/https://www.tiktok.com/@podcastdelloshogun---Mi trovi anche su Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/18pSpwnHNWevxRPaFpXh26Su Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-dello-shogun/id1649546421Su Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/@PodcastDelloShogunSu Spreaker:https://www.spreaker.com/show/podcast-dello-shogun---Se desideri sostenere il podcast, puoi farlo in due modi:- Tramite ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/podcastdelloshogun- Tramite Paypal: https://paypal.me/podcastdelloshogunFonti:Karl F. Friday - Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval JapanGeorge Sansom - A History of Japan to 1334Minoru Shinoda - The Founding of the Kamakura Shogunate, 1180-1185Stephen Turnbull - The Gempei War 1180-85/Azuma KagamiMusica:"Sturm un Drang" - Remix, Samurai Shodown"Ishikari Lore" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: ByAttribution 4.0 License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Capitoli:00:00 - Intro00:53 - La città della pace e della tranquillità21:20 - Il Potere dei Fujiwara55:40 - Sfida al potere, parte 1 - I Minamoto1:11:30 - Sfida al potere, parte 2 - I Taira1:20:12 - Focus On Taira no Kiyomori#podcast #podcastitalia #podcastdelloshogun #giappone #giapponese #samurai #shogun #heian #kyoto #periodoheian #storia #japan #japanese

08.02.2026 | Søndagsmøte på Fossnes

The various words for “divorce” in Japanese—rien, enkiri, fūfu wakare, rikon—reflect how the socially constructed institutions of marriage and family, along with their dissolutions, have been understood in Japanese history and jurisprudence. Employing a broad definition of divorce as the end of a romantic union sanctioned by law, social custom, or mutual agreement, Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce explores the shifting attitudes toward divorce in literature by women from the Heian (794–1185) to Heisei (1989–2019) periods. The collection features writing by renowned authors Tamura Toshiko (1884–1945), Uno Chiyo (1897–1996), and Tsushima Yūko (1947–2016), who used divorce as a literary device to enable their female protagonists to take bold steps toward new lives. A coda explores more contemporary views on marriage, divorce, and romantic love in the work of novelists Itoyama Akiko (1966–) and Kawakami Mieko (1976–) and poet Saihate Tahi (1986–). A wide-ranging introduction provides an overview of the historical, legal, and literary significance of divorce in Japan. The translated texts, appearing in English for the first time, are accompanied by essays introducing the authors and offering brief analyses. Bold Breaks will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese literature and culture, particularly those interested in gender issues and family social practices, and will enrich the growing conversation on marriage and divorce across cultures and eras. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The various words for “divorce” in Japanese—rien, enkiri, fūfu wakare, rikon—reflect how the socially constructed institutions of marriage and family, along with their dissolutions, have been understood in Japanese history and jurisprudence. Employing a broad definition of divorce as the end of a romantic union sanctioned by law, social custom, or mutual agreement, Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce explores the shifting attitudes toward divorce in literature by women from the Heian (794–1185) to Heisei (1989–2019) periods. The collection features writing by renowned authors Tamura Toshiko (1884–1945), Uno Chiyo (1897–1996), and Tsushima Yūko (1947–2016), who used divorce as a literary device to enable their female protagonists to take bold steps toward new lives. A coda explores more contemporary views on marriage, divorce, and romantic love in the work of novelists Itoyama Akiko (1966–) and Kawakami Mieko (1976–) and poet Saihate Tahi (1986–). A wide-ranging introduction provides an overview of the historical, legal, and literary significance of divorce in Japan. The translated texts, appearing in English for the first time, are accompanied by essays introducing the authors and offering brief analyses. Bold Breaks will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese literature and culture, particularly those interested in gender issues and family social practices, and will enrich the growing conversation on marriage and divorce across cultures and eras. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

The various words for “divorce” in Japanese—rien, enkiri, fūfu wakare, rikon—reflect how the socially constructed institutions of marriage and family, along with their dissolutions, have been understood in Japanese history and jurisprudence. Employing a broad definition of divorce as the end of a romantic union sanctioned by law, social custom, or mutual agreement, Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce explores the shifting attitudes toward divorce in literature by women from the Heian (794–1185) to Heisei (1989–2019) periods. The collection features writing by renowned authors Tamura Toshiko (1884–1945), Uno Chiyo (1897–1996), and Tsushima Yūko (1947–2016), who used divorce as a literary device to enable their female protagonists to take bold steps toward new lives. A coda explores more contemporary views on marriage, divorce, and romantic love in the work of novelists Itoyama Akiko (1966–) and Kawakami Mieko (1976–) and poet Saihate Tahi (1986–). A wide-ranging introduction provides an overview of the historical, legal, and literary significance of divorce in Japan. The translated texts, appearing in English for the first time, are accompanied by essays introducing the authors and offering brief analyses. Bold Breaks will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese literature and culture, particularly those interested in gender issues and family social practices, and will enrich the growing conversation on marriage and divorce across cultures and eras. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

The various words for “divorce” in Japanese—rien, enkiri, fūfu wakare, rikon—reflect how the socially constructed institutions of marriage and family, along with their dissolutions, have been understood in Japanese history and jurisprudence. Employing a broad definition of divorce as the end of a romantic union sanctioned by law, social custom, or mutual agreement, Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce explores the shifting attitudes toward divorce in literature by women from the Heian (794–1185) to Heisei (1989–2019) periods. The collection features writing by renowned authors Tamura Toshiko (1884–1945), Uno Chiyo (1897–1996), and Tsushima Yūko (1947–2016), who used divorce as a literary device to enable their female protagonists to take bold steps toward new lives. A coda explores more contemporary views on marriage, divorce, and romantic love in the work of novelists Itoyama Akiko (1966–) and Kawakami Mieko (1976–) and poet Saihate Tahi (1986–). A wide-ranging introduction provides an overview of the historical, legal, and literary significance of divorce in Japan. The translated texts, appearing in English for the first time, are accompanied by essays introducing the authors and offering brief analyses. Bold Breaks will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese literature and culture, particularly those interested in gender issues and family social practices, and will enrich the growing conversation on marriage and divorce across cultures and eras. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

The various words for “divorce” in Japanese—rien, enkiri, fūfu wakare, rikon—reflect how the socially constructed institutions of marriage and family, along with their dissolutions, have been understood in Japanese history and jurisprudence. Employing a broad definition of divorce as the end of a romantic union sanctioned by law, social custom, or mutual agreement, Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce explores the shifting attitudes toward divorce in literature by women from the Heian (794–1185) to Heisei (1989–2019) periods. The collection features writing by renowned authors Tamura Toshiko (1884–1945), Uno Chiyo (1897–1996), and Tsushima Yūko (1947–2016), who used divorce as a literary device to enable their female protagonists to take bold steps toward new lives. A coda explores more contemporary views on marriage, divorce, and romantic love in the work of novelists Itoyama Akiko (1966–) and Kawakami Mieko (1976–) and poet Saihate Tahi (1986–). A wide-ranging introduction provides an overview of the historical, legal, and literary significance of divorce in Japan. The translated texts, appearing in English for the first time, are accompanied by essays introducing the authors and offering brief analyses. Bold Breaks will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese literature and culture, particularly those interested in gender issues and family social practices, and will enrich the growing conversation on marriage and divorce across cultures and eras. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

Neste episódio, atravessamos Rashōmon, conto de Ryūnosuke Akutagawa ambientado no final do período Heian, quando a capital japonesa se encontra em ruínas físicas e morais. Sob a chuva incessante, o antigo portal de entrada de Quioto torna-se abrigo provisório, cemitério improvisado e palco de uma decisão irreversível.A narrativa acompanha um genin recém-demitido, suspenso entre a fome e o crime, à espera de nada. Quando o mundo já não oferece alternativas reais, a moral deixa de ser um princípio e passa a ser um obstáculo. O encontro com uma velha que profana cadáveres para sobreviver não desperta redenção, mas fornece a justificativa final para o colapso ético.Este episódio investiga Rashōmon como uma fábula niilista sobre a racionalização do mal, onde não há culpa, confissão ou promessa de retorno. Diferente das tradições que veem no sofrimento um caminho de purificação, aqui a sobrevivência basta como explicação e o homem desaparece na noite sem julgamento nem memória.Um conto sobre decadência, egoísmo e o silêncio absoluto que resta quando nenhuma ética resiste ao desmoronamento do mundo.

Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan (Brill, 2025) offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, revealing the multitude of factors that contributed to it, as well as the social, political, and cultural reasons behind waka's rise.Deftly combining sociological theory and social and intellectual history with insightful readings of a wealth of primary texts—some never before discussed in English—the book is both a history of waka in the Heian period and a study of Heian court society through the lens of waka. Gian Piero Persiani is Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Jingyi Li is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles. She is a cultural historian of nineteenth-century Japan. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan (Brill, 2025) offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, revealing the multitude of factors that contributed to it, as well as the social, political, and cultural reasons behind waka's rise.Deftly combining sociological theory and social and intellectual history with insightful readings of a wealth of primary texts—some never before discussed in English—the book is both a history of waka in the Heian period and a study of Heian court society through the lens of waka. Gian Piero Persiani is Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Jingyi Li is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles. She is a cultural historian of nineteenth-century Japan. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan (Brill, 2025) offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, revealing the multitude of factors that contributed to it, as well as the social, political, and cultural reasons behind waka's rise.Deftly combining sociological theory and social and intellectual history with insightful readings of a wealth of primary texts—some never before discussed in English—the book is both a history of waka in the Heian period and a study of Heian court society through the lens of waka. Gian Piero Persiani is Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Jingyi Li is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles. She is a cultural historian of nineteenth-century Japan. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan (Brill, 2025) offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, revealing the multitude of factors that contributed to it, as well as the social, political, and cultural reasons behind waka's rise.Deftly combining sociological theory and social and intellectual history with insightful readings of a wealth of primary texts—some never before discussed in English—the book is both a history of waka in the Heian period and a study of Heian court society through the lens of waka. Gian Piero Persiani is Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Jingyi Li is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles. She is a cultural historian of nineteenth-century Japan. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan (Brill, 2025) offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, revealing the multitude of factors that contributed to it, as well as the social, political, and cultural reasons behind waka's rise.Deftly combining sociological theory and social and intellectual history with insightful readings of a wealth of primary texts—some never before discussed in English—the book is both a history of waka in the Heian period and a study of Heian court society through the lens of waka. Gian Piero Persiani is Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Jingyi Li is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles. She is a cultural historian of nineteenth-century Japan. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan (Brill, 2025) offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, revealing the multitude of factors that contributed to it, as well as the social, political, and cultural reasons behind waka's rise.Deftly combining sociological theory and social and intellectual history with insightful readings of a wealth of primary texts—some never before discussed in English—the book is both a history of waka in the Heian period and a study of Heian court society through the lens of waka. Gian Piero Persiani is Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Jingyi Li is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles. She is a cultural historian of nineteenth-century Japan. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/japanese-studies

Waka poetry was all the rage in tenth-century, courtly Japan. Every educated person composed it, emperors and consorts sponsored it, and societal interest in it was at an all-time high. Poets, Patrons, and the Public: Poetry as Cultural Phenomenon in Courtly Japan (Brill, 2025) offers an unprecedentedly broad and vivid portrayal of this season of literary flourishing, revealing the multitude of factors that contributed to it, as well as the social, political, and cultural reasons behind waka's rise.Deftly combining sociological theory and social and intellectual history with insightful readings of a wealth of primary texts—some never before discussed in English—the book is both a history of waka in the Heian period and a study of Heian court society through the lens of waka. Gian Piero Persiani is Assistant Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Jingyi Li is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles. She is a cultural historian of nineteenth-century Japan. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.

Marte Heian-Engdal er historiker og forsker med spesialfelt i Midtøstens historie og konflikter. Hun har en doktorgrad i internasjonal historie fra Universitetet i Oslo, og er assisterende direktør ved NOREF Senter for internasjonal konfliktløsning.Heian-Engdal er forfatter av boken Israel - historie, politikk og samfunn (Cappelen Damm Akademisk, 2018), og boken "Et Gaza-liv - familien, flukten og det tapte landet", (Kagge forlag, 2024). I samtalen vår snakker vi om hvorfor vi i Norge er så opptatt av Israel og Midtøsten. Vi snakker om Israels krig mot Hamas, og om min kritikk mot Heian-Engdal bekymring for at vi demoniserer hamas. Vi snakker videre om dødstallene på Gaza, og om at Israels krig jo er mot en terror-organisasjon, ikke mot sivilbefolkningen. Videre snakker vi om hvorfor venstresiden og palestina-aktivistene ikke bryr seg når hamas slakter ned sivile folk på Gaza. ► NY BOK UTE NÅ: Frykt og Stillhet - jødiske stemmer i Norge etter 7. oktober. Bestill her:  https://bok.norli.no/frykt-og-stillhet► STØTT ARBEIDET PÅ VIPPSOm du ønsker å støtte arbeidet med denne podcasten, kan du bidra med et stort eller lite beløp, etter eget ønske. All støtte settes pris på, og du bidrar til arbeidet med å lage flere episoder. Bruk Vippsnummer: #823278►  ⁠BLI ⁠⁠⁠⁠MEDLEM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Fremover vil de som er støttemedlemmer få tilgang til episodene først. Da støtter du podcasten med det samme som prisen av en kaffe hver måned. Setter stor pris på om du blir støttemedlem. Tusen takk.► Annonsere på Henrik Beckheim Podcast?Send en mail til post@henrikbeckheim.no ► MERCH: Kjøp klær, kopper, capser og mer: https://henrikbeckheim.com/store► Linker:⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Nettside⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ | Podimo | ⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Apple

This episode we start to get more into the material culture of the period with court fashion, as we look at the court robes that went along with the updated court ranks.  Granted, we only have a few resources, but from those it does seem like we can construct at least a plausible idea of what the court may have looked like at this time. For more discussion, check out the blogpost:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-137   Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is Episode 137:  Courtly Fashion. In the New Year's ceremony, the court officials lined up in front of the Kiyomihara Palace, arranged by their relative court rank, dressed in their assigned court robes.  The effect was impressive—the rows of officials painting the courtyard like the bands of color in a rainbow, albeit one with only a couple of hues.  The fact that they were all wearing the same style of dress and black, stiffened gauze hats only added to the effect.  The individual officers were all but lost in what was, at least in outward form, a single, homogenous machine of government, just waiting for the command of their monarch to attend to the important matters of state. We are covering the reign of Ohoama no Ohokimi, aka Ama no Nunahara oki no mabito no Sumera no Mikoto, aka Temmu Tennou.  Last episode we went over the changes he had made to the family titles—the kabane—as well as to the courtly rank system.  For the former, he had consolidated the myriad kabane and traditional titles across Yamato into a series of eight—the Yakusa no Kabane.   These were, from highest to lowest: Mabito, Asomi, Sukune, Imiki, Michinoshi, Omi, Muraji, and Inaki.  By the way, you might notice that "Mabito" actually occurs in Ohoama's posthumous name:  Ama no Nunahara oki no mabito, which lends more credence to the idea that that kabane was for those with a special connection to the royal lineage. Besides simplifying and restructuring the kabane, Ohoama also reformed the court rank system.  He divided the Princely ranks into two categories:  Myou, or Bright, and Jou, or Pure.  For the court nobles the categories were:                Shou – Upright                Jiki – Straight                Gon – Diligent                Mu – Earnest                Tsui – Pursue                Shin – Advancement Each category was further divided into four grades (except for the very first princely category, Myou, which was only two).  Each grade was then further divided into large, "dai", or broad, "kou". And this brings us to our topic today. Along with this new rank system, Ohoama's administration also instituted a new set of court sumptuary laws. Some are vague in the record—we can just make assumptions for what is going on based on what we know from later fashion choices.  Others are a little more clear.  We'll take a look at those sumptuary laws, particularly those that were directly associated with the new court rank system, but we'll also look at the clothing styles more generally. To start with, let's talk about what we know about clothing in the archipelago in general.  Unfortunately, fabric doesn't tend to survive very well in the generally acidic soils of the Japanese archipelago.  Cloth tends to break down pretty quickly.  That said, we have fragments here and there and impressions in pottery, so we have some idea that there was some kind of woven fabric from which to make clothing out of. And before I go too far I want to give a shout out to the amazing people at the Kyoto Costume Museum.  They have a tremendous website and I will link to it in the comments.  While there may be some debate over particular interpretations of historical clothing, it is an excellent resource to get a feel for what we know of the fashion of the various periods.  I'll also plug our own website, SengokuDaimyo.com, which has a "Clothing and Accessory" section that, while more geared towards Heian and later periods, may still be of some use in looking up particular terms and getting to know the clothing and outfits. At the farthest reaches of pre-history, we really don't have a lot of information for clothing.  There is evidence of woven goods in the Jomon period, and we have Yayoi burials with bits of cloth here and there, but these are all scraps.  So at best we have some conjecture as to what people were wearing, and possibly some ability to look across the Korean peninsula and see what people had, there. There are scant to no reliable records from early on in Japanese history, and most of those don't really do a great job of describing the clothing.  Even where we do get something, like the Weizhi, one has to wonder given how they tended to crib notes from other entries. There is at least one picture scroll of interest: Portraits of Periodical Offering of Liang, or Liáng -Zhígòngtú.  It is said to have been painted by Xiao Yi in the early 6th century, and while the original no longer exists there is an 11th century copy from the time of the Song Dynasty.  The scroll shows  various ambassadors to the Liang court, including one from Wa.  The Wa ambassador is shown with what appears to be a wide piece of cloth around his hips and legs, tied in front.  His lower legs are covered in what we might call kyahan today: a rather simple wrap around leg from below the knee to the foot.  He has another, blue piece of cloth around his shoulders, almost like a shawl, and it is also tied in front.  Then there is a cloth wrapped and tied around his head. It's hard to know how much of this depiction is accurate and how much the artist was drawing on memory and descriptions from things like the Weizhi or Wei Chronicles, which stated that the Wa people wore wide cloths wrapped around and seamlessly tied As such, it may be more helpful to look at depictions actually from the archipelago: specifically, some of the human-figured haniwa, those clay cylinders and statues that adorned the burial mounds which gave the kofun period its name.  Some of these haniwa are fairly detailed, and we can see ties, collars, and similar features of clothing. These haniwa primarily seem to cluster towards the end of the Kofun period, in the later 6th century, so it is hard to say how much they can be used for earlier periods, though that is exactly what you will typically see for periods where we have little to know evidence.  I'm also not sure how regional certain fashions might have been, and we could very much be suffering from survivorship bias—that is we only know what survived and assume that was everything, or even the majority. Still, it is something. Much of what we see in these figures is some kind of upper garment that has relatively tight sleeves, like a modern shirt or jacket might have, with the front pieces overlapping create a V-shaped neckline.  The garment hem often hangs down to just above the knee, flaring out away from the body, and it's held closed with ties and some kind of belt, possibly leather in some cases, and in others it looks like a tied loop of cloth.  There is evidence of a kind of trouser, with two legs, and we see ties around the knee.  In some cases, they even have small bells hanging from the ties.  Presumably the trousers might have ties up towards the waist, but we cannot see that in the examples we have. We also see individuals who have no evidence of any kind of bifurcated lower garment.  That may indicate an underskirt of some kind, or possibly what's called a "mo"—but it could also be just a simplification for stability, since a haniwa has a cylindrical base anyway.  It is not always obvious when you are looking at a haniwa figure whether it depicts a man or woman: in some cases there are two dots on the chest that seem to make it obvious, but the haniwa do come from different artisans in different regions, so there is a lot of variability. We also see evidence of what seem to be decorative sashes that are worn across the body, though not in all cases.  There are various types of headgear and hairstyles.  Wide-brimmed and domed hats are not uncommon, and we also see combs and elaborate hairstyles depicted.  On some occasions we can even see that they had closed toed shoes.  For accessories, we see haniwa wearing jewelry, including necklaces (worn by both men and women), bracelets, and earrings.  In terms of actual human jewelry, early shell bracelets demonstrate trade routes, and the distinctive magatama, or comma shaped jewel, can be found in the archipelago and on the Korean peninsula, where it is known as "gogok".  Based on lines or even colored pigment on the haniwa, it appears that many of these outfits were actually quite heavily decorated.  Paint on the outfits is sometimes also placed on the face, suggesting that they either painted or tattooed themselves, something mentioned in the Wei Chronicles.  We also have archaeological examples of dyed cloth, so it is interesting that people are often depicted in undyed clothing.  There is one haniwa that I find particularly interesting, because they appear to be wearing more of a round-necked garment, and they have a hat that is reminiscent of the phrygian cap: a conical cap with the top bent forward.  These are traits common to some of the Sogdians and other Persian merchants along the silk road, raising the possibility that it is meant to depict a foreigner, though it is also possible that it was just another local style. If we compare this to the continent, we can see some immediate difference.  In the contemporaneous Sui dynasty, we can see long flowing robes, with large sleeves for men and women.  The shoes often had an upturned placket that appears to have been useful to prevent one from tripping on long, flowing garments.  Many of these outfits were also of the v-neck variety, with two overlapping pieces, though it is often shown held together with a fabric belt that is tied in front.  The hats appear to either be a kind of loose piece of fabric, often described as a turban, wrapped around the head, the ends where it ties together trailing behind, or black lacquered crowns—though there were also some fairly elaborate pieces for the sovereign. As Yamato started to import continental philosophy, governance, and religion, they would also start to pick up on continental fashion.  This seems particularly true as they adopted the continental concept of "cap rank" or "kan-i". Let's go over what we know about this system, from its first mention in the Chronicles up to where we are in Ohoama's reign. As a caveat, there is a lot we don't know about the details of these garments, but we can make some guesses. The first twelve cap-ranks, theoretically established in 603, are somewhat questionable in their historicity, as are so many things related to Shotoku Taishi.  And their names are clearly based on Confucian values:  Virtue, Humanity, Propriety, Faith, Justice, and Wisdom, or Toku, Nin, Rei, Shin, Gi, and Chi.  The five values and then just "Virtue", itself. The existence of this system does seem to be confirmed by the Sui Shu, the Book of Sui, which includes a note in the section on the country of Wa that they used a 12 rank system based on the Confucian values, but those values were given in the traditional Confucian order vice the order given in the Nihon Shoki.   The rank system of the contemporaneous Sui and Tang dynasties was different from these 12 ranks, suggesting that the Yamato system either came from older dynasties—perhaps from works on the Han dynasty or the Northern and Southern Dynasty, periods—or they got it from their neighbors, Baekje, Silla, and Goguryeo.  There does seem to be a common thread, though, that court rank was identifiable in one's clothes. As for the caps themselves, what did they look like?  One would assume that the Yamato court just adopted a continental style cap, and yet, which one? It isn't fully described, and there are a number of types of headwear that we see in the various continental courts. Given that, we aren't entirely sure exactly what it looked like, but we do have a couple of sources that we can look at and use to make some assumptions.  These sources l ead us to the idea of a round, colored cap made of fabric, around the brim that was probably the fabric or image prescribed for that rank.  It is also often depicted with a bulbous top, likely for the wearer's hair, and may have been tied to their top knot.     Our main source for this is the Tenjukoku Mandala Embroidery (Tenjukoku-mandara-shuuchou) at Chuuguuji temple, which was a temple built for the mother of Prince Umayado, aka Shotoku Taishi.    This embroidery was created in 622, so 19 years after the 12 ranks would have been implemented. It depicts individuals in round-necked jackets that appear to have a part straight down the center.  Beneath the jacket one can see a pleated hem, possibly something like a "hirami", a wrapped skirt that is still found in some ceremonial imperial robes.  It strikes me that this could also be the hem of something like the hanpi, which was kind of like a vest with a pleated lower edge.  Below that we see trousers—hakama—with a red colored hem—at least on one figure that we can see.  He also appears to be wearing a kind of slipper-like shoe. As for the women, there are a few that appear to be in the mandala, but it is hard to say for certain as the embroidery has been damaged over the years. That said, from what we can tell, women probably would have worn something similar to the men in terms of the jacket and the pleated under-skirt, but then, instead of hakama, we see a pleated full-length skirt, or mo.  We also don't have a lot of evidence for them wearing hats or anything like that. The round necked jacket is interesting as it appears to be similar to the hou that was common from northern China across the Silk Road, especially amongst foreigners.  This garment  came to displace the traditional robes of the Tang court and would become the basis for much of the court clothing from that period, onwards.  The round necked garment had central panels that overlapped, and small ties or fastenings at either side of the neck to allow for an entirely enclosed neckline.  This was more intricate than just two, straight collars, and so may have taken time to adopt, fully. The next change to the cap-rank system was made in 647, two years into the Taika Reform.  The ranks then were more directly named for the caps, or crowns—kanmuri—and their materials and colors.  The ranks translate to Woven, Embroidered, Purple, Brocade, Blue, Black, and finally "Establish Valor" for the entry level rank. The system gets updated two years later, but only slightly.  We still see a reference to Woven stuff, Embroidery, and Purple, but then the next several ranks change to Flower, Mountain, and Tiger—or possibly Kingfisher.  These were a little more removed from the cap color and material, and may have had something to do with designs that were meant to be embroidered on the cap or on the robes in some way, though that is just speculation based on later Ming and Qing court outfits. Naka no Ohoye then updates it again in 664, but again only a little.  He seems to add back in the "brocade" category, swapping out the "flower", and otherwise just adds extra grades within each category to expand to 26 total rank grades. And that brings us to the reforms of 685, mentioned last episode.  This new system was built around what appear to be moral exhortations—Upright, Straight, Diligent, Earnest, etc.  And that is great and all, but how does that match up with the official robes? What color goes with each rank category?  Fortunately, this time around, the Chronicle lays it out for us pretty clearly. First off we are given the color red for the Princely ranks—not purple as one might have thought.  Specifically, it is "Vermillion Flower", hanezu-iro, which Bentley translates as the color of the "Oriental bush" or salmon.  In the blogpost we'll link to a table of colors that the founder of Sengoku Daimyo, Anthony Bryant, had put together, with some explanation of how to apply it.  I would note that there is often no way to know exactly what a given color was like or what shades were considered an acceptable range.  Everything was hand-dyed, and leaving fabric in the dye a little longer, changing the proportions, or just fading over time could create slightly different variants in the hue, but we think we can get pretty close. From there we have the six "common" ranks for the nobility.  Starting with the first rank, Upright, we have "Dark Purple".  Then we have "Light Purple".  This pattern continues with Dark and Light Green and then Dark and Light Grape or Lilac.  Purple in this case is Murasaki, and green here is specifically Midori, which is more specifically green than the larger category of "Aoi", which covers a spectrum of blue to green.  The grape or lilac is specifically "suou", and based on Bentley's colors it would be a kind of purple or violet. The idea is that the official court outfits for each rank would be the proper color.  And yes, that means if you get promoted in rank, your first paycheck—or rice stipend—is probably going to pay for a new set of official clothes.  Fortunately for the existing court nobles at the time, in the last month of 685, the Queen provided court clothing for 55 Princes and Ministers, so they could all look the part. And the look at court was important.  In fact, several of the edicts from this time focus specifically on who was allowed—or expected—to wear what.  For instance, in the 4th month of 681, they established 92 articles of the law code, and among those were various sumptuary laws—that is to say, laws as to what you could wear.  We are told that they applied to everyone from Princes of the blood down to the common person, and it regulated the wearing of precious metals, pearls, and jewels; the type of fabric one could use, whether purple, brocade, embroidery, or fine silks; and it also regulated woollen carpets, caps, belts, and the colors of various things. And here I'd like to pause and give some brief thought to how this played into the goals of the court, generally, which is to say the goal of creating and establishing this new system of governance in the cultural psyche of the people of the archipelago.  From the continental style palaces, to the temples, and right down to the clothing that people were wearing, this was all orchestrated, consciously or otherwise, to emphasize and even normalize the changes that were being introduced.  When everything around you is conforming to the new rules, it makes it quite easy for others to get on board. The court had surrounded themselves with monumental architecture that was designed along continental models and could best be explained through continental reasoning.  Even if they weren't Confucian or Daoist, those lines of reasoning ran through the various cultural and material changes that they were taking up.  Sure, they put their own stamp on it, but at the same time, when everything is right in front of you, it would become that much harder to deny or push back against it. And when you participated in the important rituals of the state, the clothing itself became a part of the pageantry.  It reinforced the notion that this was something new and different, and yet also emphasized that pushing against it would be going against the majority.  So court uniforms were another arm of the state's propaganda machine, all designed to reinforce the idea that the heavenly sovereign—the Tennou—was the right and just center of political life and deserving of their position.  Getting back to the sumptuary laws and rank based regulations: It is unfortunate that the record in the Nihon Shoki doesn't tell us exactly how things were regulated, only that they were, at least in some cases.  So for anything more we can only make assumptions based on later rules and traditions.  A few things we can see right away, though.  First is the restriction of the color purple.  Much as in Europe and elsewhere in the world, getting a dark purple was something that was not as easy as one might think, and so it tended to be an expensive dye and thus it would be restricted to the upper classes—in this case the princely and ministerial rank, no doubt.  Similarly brocade and fine silks were also expensive items that were likely restricted to people of a particular social station for that reason. The mention of woolen rugs is particularly intriguing.  Bentley translates this as woven mattresses, but I think that woolen rugs makes sense, as we do have examples of woolen "rugs" in Japan in at least the 8th century, stored in the famous Shousouin repository at Toudaiji temple, in Nara.  These are all imported from the continent and are actually made of felt, rather than woven.  As an imported item, out of a material that you could not get in the archipelago, due to a notable lack of sheep, they would have no doubt been expensive. The funny thing is that the carpets in the Shousouin may not have been meant as carpets.  For the most part they are of a similar size and rectangular shape, and one could see how they may have been used as sleeping mattresses or floor coverings.  However, there is some conjecture that they came from the Silk Road and may have been originally meant as felt doors for the tents used by the nomadic steppe peoples.  This is only conjecture, as I do not believe any of these rugs have survived in the lands where they would have been made, but given the size and shape and the modern yurt, it is not hard to see how that may have been the case.  Either way, I tend to trust that this could very well have meant woolen rugs, as Aston and the kanji themselves suggest, though I would understand if there was confusion or if it meant something else as wool was not exactly common in the archipelago at that time or in the centuries following. The last section of the regulations talks about the use of caps and belts.  The caps here were probably of continental origin:  The kanmuri, or official cap of state of the court nobles, or the more relaxed eboshi—though at this time, they were no doubt closely related. In fact, a year later, we have the most specific mention to-date of what people were actually wearing on their heads: there is a mention of men tying up their hair and wearing caps of varnished gauze.  Earlier caps related to the cap rank system are often thought to be something like a simple hemisphere  that was placed upon the head, with a bulbous top where the wearer's hair could be pulled up as in a bun. The kanmuri seems to have evolved from the soft black headcloth that was worn on the continent, which would have tied around the head, leaving two ends hanging down behind.  Hairstyles of the time often meant that men had a small bun or similar gathering of hair towards the back of their head, and tying a cloth around the head gave the effect of a small bump.  This is probably what we see in depictions of the early caps of state.  Sometimes this topknot could be covered with a small crown or other decoration, or wrapped with a cloth, often referred to as a "Tokin" in Japanese.  But over time we see the development of hardened forms to be worn under a hat to provide the appropriate silhouette, whether or not you actually had a topknot (possibly helpful for gentlemen suffering from hair loss).  And then the hat becomes less of a piece of cloth and more just a hat of black, lacquered gauze made on a form, which was much easier to wear.  At this point in the Chronicle, the cap was likely still somewhat malleable, and would made to tie or be pinned to that bun or queue of hair.  This explains the mention of men wearing their hair up.  This pin would become important for several different types of headgear, but ties were also used for those who did not have hair to hold the hat on properly. Two years after the edict on hats, we get another edict on clothing, further suggesting that the court were wearing Tang inspired clothing.  In 685 we see that individuals are given leave to wear their outer robe either open or tied closed. This is a clue that this outer robe might something akin to the round-necked hou that we see in the Tenjukoku Mandala, where the neck seems to close with a small tie or button.  However, we do see some examples, later, of v-necked garments with a tie in the center of the neck, so that may be the reference..  Opening the collar of the formal robes was somewhat akin to loosening a necktie, or unbuttoning the top button of a shirt.  It provided a more relaxed and comfortable feeling.  It could also be a boon in the warm days of summer.  Leaving it closed could create a more formal appearance. The courtiers also had the option of whether or not to wear the "Susotsuki", which Bentley translates as "skirt-band".  I believe this refers to the nai'i, or inner garment.  This would often have a pleated hem—a suso or ran—which would show below the main robe as just a slight hem.  Again, this is something that many would dispense with in the summer, or just when dressing a bit more casually, but it was required at court, as well as making sure that the tassles were tied so that they hung down.  This was the uniform of the court.  We are also told that they would have trousers that could be tied up, which sounds like later sashinuki, though it may have referred to something slightly different.  We are also given some regulations specifically for women, such as the fact that women over 40 years of age were allowed the discretion on whether or not to tie up their hair, as well as whether they would ride horses astride or side-saddle.  Presumably, younger women did not get a choice in the matter.  Female shrine attendants and functionaries were likewise given some leeway with their hairstyles. A year later, in 686, they do seem to have relaxed the hairstyles a bit more: women were allowed to let their hair down to their backs as they had before, so it seems that, for at least a couple of years, women under the age of 40 were expected to wear their hair tied up in one fashion or another. In that same edict, men were then allowed to wear "habakimo".  Aston translates this as "leggings" while Bentley suggests it is a "waist skirt".  There are an example of extant habakimo in the Shousouin, once again, and they appear to be wrappings for the lower leg.  It actually seems very closely related to the "kyahan" depicted all the way back in the 6th century painting of the Wo ambassador to Liang. Even though these edicts give a lot more references to clothing, there is still plenty that is missing.  It isn't like the Chroniclers were giving a red carpet style stitch-by-stitch critique of what was being worn at court.  Fortunately, there is a rather remarkable archaeological discovery from about this time. Takamatsuzuka is a kofun, or ancient burial mound, found in Asuka and dated to the late 7th or early 8th century.  Compared to the keyhole shaped tombs of previous centuries, this tomb is quite simple: a two-tiered circular tomb nestled in the quiet hills.  What makes it remarkable is that the inside of the stone burial chamber was elaborately painted.  There are depictions of the four guardian animals, as well as the sun and the moon, as well as common constellations.  More importantly, though, are the intricate pictures of men and women dressed in elaborate clothing. The burial chamber of Takamatsuzuka is rectangular in shape.  There are images on the four vertical sides as well as on the ceiling.  The chamber is oriented north-south, with genbu, the black tortoise, on the north wall and presumably Suzaku, the vermillion bird, on the south wall—though that had been broken at some point and it is hard to make out exactly what is there. The east and west walls are about three times as long as the north and south walls.  In the center of each is a guardian animal—byakko, the white tiger, on the west wall and seiryuu, the blue—or green—dragon on the east.  All of these images are faded, and since opening of the tomb have faded even more, so while photos can help, it may require a bit more investigation and some extrapolation to understand all of what we are looking at. On the northern side of both the east and west wall we see groups of four women.  We can make out green, yellow, and red or vermillion outer robes with thin fabric belt sashes, or obi, tied loosely and low around the waist.  There is another, lightly colored—possibly white, cream or pink—that is so faded it is hard to make out, and I don't know if that is the original color.  These are v-necked robes, with what appear to be ties at the bottom of the "v".  Around the belt-sash we see a strip of white peaking out from between the two sides of the robe—most likely showing the lining on an edge that has turned back slightly.  The cuffs of the robe are folded back, showing a contrasting color—either the sleeves of an underrobe or a lining of some kind.  Below the outer robe is a white, pleated hem—possibly a hirami or similar, though where we can make it out, it seems to be the same or similar color as the sleeves.  Under all of that, they then have a relatively simple mo, or pleated skirt.  The ones in the foreground are vertically striped in alternating white, green, red, and blue stripes.  There is one that may just be red and blue stripes, but I'm not sure.  In the background we see a dark blue—and possibly a dark green—mo.  At the base of each mo is a pleated fringe that appears to be connected to the bottom of the skirt.  The toe of a shoe seems to peek out from underneath in at least one instance.  They don't have any obvious hair ornaments, and their hair appears to be swept back and tied in such a way that it actually comes back up in the back, slightly.  They appear to be holding fans and something that might be a fly swatter—a pole with what looks like tassels on the end. In comparison, at the southern end of the tomb we have two groups of men.  These are much more damaged and harder to make out clearly.  They have robes of green, yellow, grey, blue, and what looks like dark blue, purple, or even black.  The neckline appears to be a v-necked, but tied closed, similar to what we see on the women.  We also see a contrasting color at the cuff, where it looks like the sleeves have turned back, slightly.  They have belt-sashes similar to the women, made of contrasting fabric to the robe itself.  Below that we see white trousers, or hakama, and shallow, black shoes.  On some of the others it is suggested that maybe they have a kind of woven sandal, but that is hard to make out in the current image.  On their heads are hats or headgear of black, stiffened—probably lacquered—gauze.  They have a bump in the back, which is probably the wearer's hair, and there is evidence of small ties on top and larger ties in the back, hanging down.  Some interpretations also show a couple with chin straps, as well, or at least a black cord that goes down to the chin.  They carry a variety of implements, suggesting they are attendants, with an umbrella, a folding chair, a pouch worn around the neck, a pole or cane of some kind, and a bag with some kind of long thing—possibly a sword or similar. The tomb was originally found by farmers in 1962, but wasn't fully examined until 1970, with an excavation starting in 1972.  The stone at the entryway was broken, probably from graverobbers, who are thought to have looted the tomb in the Kamakura period.  Fortunately, along with the bones of the deceased and a few scattered grave goods that the robbers must have missed, the murals also survived, and somehow they remained largely intact through the centuries.  They have not been entirely safe, and many of the images are damaged or faded, but you can still make out a remarkable amount of detail, which is extremely helpful in determining what clothing might have looked like at this time—assuming it is depicting local individuals. And there is the rub, since we don't know exactly whom the tomb was for.  Furthermore, in style it has been compared with Goguryeo tombs from the peninsula, much as nearby Kitora kofun is.  Kitora had images as well, but just of the guardian animals and the constellations, not of human figures. There are three theories as to who might have been buried at Takamatsuzuka.  One theory is that it was one of Ohoama's sons.  Prince Osakabe is one theory, based on the time of his death and his age.  Others have suggested Prince Takechi.  Based on the teeth of the deceased, they were probably in their 40s to 60s when they passed away. Some scholars believe that it may be a later, Nara period vassal—possibly, Isonokami no Maro.  That would certainly place it later than the Asuka period. The third theory is that it is the tomb of a member of one of the royal families from the Korean peninsula—possibly someone who had taken up refuge in the archipelago as Silla came to dominate the entire peninsula.  This last theory matches with the fact that Takamatsuzuka appears to be similar to tombs found in Goguryeo, though that could just have to do with where the tomb builders were coming from, or what they had learned. That does bring up the question of the figures in the tomb.  Were they contemporary figures, indicating people and dress of the court at the time, or were they meant to depict people from the continent?  Without any other examples, we may never know, but even if was indicative of continental styles, those were the very styles that Yamato was importing, so it may not matter, in the long run.     One other garment that isn't mentioned here is the hire, a scarf that is typically associated with women.  It is unclear if it has any relationship to the sashes we see in the Kofun period, though there is at least one mention of a woman with a hire during one of the campaigns on the Korean peninsula.  Later we see it depicted as a fairly gauzy piece of silk, that is worn somewhat like a shawl.  It is ubiquitous in Sui and Tang paintings of women, indicating a wide-ranging fashion trend.  The hire is a fairly simple piece of clothing, and yet it creates a very distinctive look which we certainly see, later. Finally, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that almost everything we have discussed here has to do with the elites of society—the nobles of the court.  For most people, working the land, we can assume that they were probably not immediately adopting the latest continental fashions, and they probably weren't dressing in silk very much.  Instead, it is likely that they continued to wear some version of the same outfits we see in the haniwa figures of the kofun period.  This goes along with the fact that even as the elite are moving into palaces built to stand well above the ground, we still have evidence of common people building and living in pit dwellings, as they had been for centuries.  This would eventually change, but overall they stuck around for quite some time.  However, farmers and common people are often ignored by various sources—they aren't often written about, they often aren't shown in paintings or statues, and they did often not get specialized burials.  Nonetheless, they were the most populous group in the archipelago, supporting all of the rest. And with that, I think we will stop for now.  Still plenty more to cover this reign.  We are definitely into the more historical period, where we have more faith in the dates—though we should remember that this is also one of the reigns that our sources were specifically designed to prop up, so we can't necessarily take everything without at least a hint of salt and speculation, even if the dates themselves are more likely to be accurate. Until then, if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

Il Giappone non celebra solo la primavera dei ciliegi.L'autunno porta con sé il Momijigari: la “caccia alle foglie rosse”, un rito che unisce poesia, filosofia e natura. Dai cortigiani dell'epoca Heian alle folle di oggi, questo viaggio tra aceri, ginkgo e festival autunnali racconta il cuore del mono no aware: la bellezza effimera delle cose.Tra illuminazioni notturne, dolci di foglie fritte a Minoh e strategie per evitare l'overtourism, scopriremo come vivere un'autenticità che va oltre le immagini da cartolina.Ascolta e lasciati guidare tra i colori e i sapori dell'autunno giapponese.link utili Marchino in Giapponehttps://www.marcoferrarigiappone.comSono in Viaggio https://www.sonoinviaggio.comAscoltaci sul tuo lettore di podcast - Giappone nel mondo -Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0sQVMNeMTKFivcSJkEsIr4Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/it/podcast/giappone-nel-mondo/id1481765190?l=en-GBYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@plot-twisterInstagram GnM: https://www.instagram.com/giapponenelmondo/Instagram PlotTwister: https://www.instagram.com/plottwistertv/Instagram Sono in viaggio: https://www.instagram.com/sono.in.viaggio/Periodo Heian (794–1185) – nascita aristocratica del Momijigari.Periodo Edo (1603–1868) – diffusione popolare della pratica.Concetto estetico “mono no aware” – sensibilità verso l'effimero.Minoh (prefettura di Osaka) – specialità culinaria delle foglie d'acero fritte (momiji tempura).Hi-taki Matsuri, Fushimi Inari (Kyoto, 8 novembre) – rito shintoista di purificazione col fuoco.Shichi-Go-San (15 novembre) – celebrazione della crescita dei bambini nei santuari.Illuminazioni notturne nei templi/giardini – usanza contemporanea per prolungare la bellezza del foliage.#podcast #giappone #italia #cultura #storia #nippon #japanlovers #autunnoingiappone #momijigari #mononoaware #kyoto #osaka #fushimiinari #foliage #giardini #podcastitaliani #youtubeitalia #intervista #storiegiapponesi #tradizioni

28.09.2025 | Søndagsmøte på Fossnes

Los kamon son los blasones o insignias familiares que identifican a cada familia o clan. Surgen en el periodo Heian sólo para nobles pero se acaban extendiendo a toda la población en el periodo Edo. En este Japonesamente damos más detalles sobre su historia y hablamos de los 5 kamon más famosos y de algunos otros muy populares, además de contarte cuáles son sus usos más frecuentes. Seguro que cuando visites Japón no podrás dejar de verlos. ¡Mata ne! ¿Quieres colaborar con el programa? - Colabora en Patreon - Únete a la Comunidad Japonismo - Reserva hoteles en Japón (y en todo el mundo) - Consigue seguro de viajes (¡no sólo para Japón!) - Busca los mejores vuelos - Lleva Internet (pocket wifi o SIM) - JR Pass para viajes ilimitados en tren ---- Continúa la conversación en: - Web: https://japonismo.com - Discord: https://discord.gg/hZrSa57 - Facebook: https://facebook.com/japonismo - Twitter: https://twitter.com/japonismo - Instagram: https://instagram.com/japonismo - Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/japonismo - Newsletter semanal: http://eepurl.com/di60Xn

Den 22. september kunngjorde president Macron at Frankrike anerkjenner Palestina i FN. Hvilke motiver ligger bak denne beslutningen? Og hvilken betydning kan den få for konflikten mellom Israel og Hamas? Vår gjest er historiker og forfatter Marte Heian Engdal.

The pet of choice in Japan, as much as cuddly kitties and playful puppies, is the humble bug. The bug has been a key part of Japanese culture from the Heian era classic The Tale of Genji to popular modern-day manga and animation like Mushishi, featuring insect-like supernatural creatures. Japanese people appreciate the glitter of fireflies let loose in the garden or the gentle chirping of crickets kept in a little cage. You can feed the bug pets watermelon, but special jelly pet food for bugs is also available at stores. Naturally, bugs are for sale as well, with the more esoteric ones selling for 20,000 yen ($133). The bug as companion is an essential part of what's observed, enjoyed and cared for in everyday life, reflecting a deeply rooted celebration of humankind's oneness with nature. "They are so tiny. If you catch and study them, you're sure to discover something new," says Munetoshi Maruyama, professor of bioenvironmental sciences at Kyushu University, whose fascination with bugs began as a child, like many Japanese. "They are so beautiful in shape and form." One thrill that comes from studying insects is discovering a new species, simply because there are more than 1.2 million known kinds of insects, far more than mammals, which translates to a lot of undiscovered ones, said Maruyama, who has discovered 250 new insect species himself and shrugs that off as a relatively small number. Japan differs from much of the West in encouraging interaction with bugs from childhood, with lots of books written for children, as well as classes and tours. "In Japan, kids love bugs. You can even buy a net at a convenience store," he said. "It's fantastic that bugs can serve as a doorway to science." The love affair with bugs was clear at an exhibit in Tokyo, aptly called "The Great Insect Exhibition," which ran through the end of last month at the Tokyo Skytree Town, where crowds of children gathered around trees inside indoor cages so they could observe and touch the various beetles. This article was provided by The Associated Press.

In this third installment of our series on the Jinshin no Ran, we are covering the battles that took place in the Nara basin.   Of course, while the fighting focuses on the generals, most of it was done by conscripts--farmers and other common people called up to fight. For more, check out of podcast webpage:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-131   Rough Transcript: Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 131: The Jinshin no Ran, Part 3: Fighting in the Nara Basin   Maro stood under the tsuki tree and gazed at the walls of the great temple.  The gates and tiled roof were truly an incredible sight.  Maro's home wasn't that far away, but until he'd been called up for service to the government, he hadn't thought much beyond the valley where he and his family tilled the land.  Their life had been largely spent in the village, tucked up in the valley, farming rice, hunting in the mountains, and gathering firewood.   He remembered how, years ago, his brothers had been the ones to go and do their service.  They had been called up to build some kind of giant fortress on the top of a mountain.  The stories they  brought back were incredible—it was one thing to hear tales of the outside world from merchants and itinerant priests, but it was different to hear them from someone you actually knew.  Now, it was Maro's turn.  But he hadn't been called up for labor—he was going to have to fight.  He tried to psych himself up.  Many of the men and, frankly, young boys who were there with him were in a similar boat.  Some were old hands, having served multiple times.  Others were new and, like Maro, there for the first time.  None of them were professional soldiers, though you wouldn't know that by the way some of them swaggered through the camp.  They had been called up quickly, with only a little information.  Apparently Prince Ohoama, they were told, had rebelled against the government.  He and his men were gathering in the east and at any moment they could attack the capital in Ohotsu, and from there they would swing down and attack the ancient capital.  So here they were, several hundred conscripts, pulled from households around the ancient capital, gathered and waiting for their weapons and armor so that they could then get their marching orders—quite literally. Suddenly, Maro heard a commotion in the north.  He couldn't see what was happening, but the murmurs turned to shouting.  Prince Takechi, the son of the demonic rebel, Ohoama, was here, coming from the north with hundreds of expert soldiers on horseback!  Panic set in, and even though a few of the officers tried to quell the disturbance, it wasn't enough.  Afraid for what might come, Maro and those like him broke ranks and fled.  Maro gave little thought to what might happen to his family and friends if he deserted—he was no longer thinking rationally.  Along with his compatriots—his would-be brothers-in-arms if they had been given any—he hoped that he could hide, and that, if he survived, maybe, just maybe, he could somehow make it back home in one piece.   Welcome back.  Content warning for this episode—we are going to be talking about war, including death, fighting, and suicide. As I noted at the start, this is part three of our look at the Jinshin no Ran, the Jinshin War—sometimes translated as a “Disturbance” or a “Rebellion”.  This was the war between the supporters of Prince Ohoama, also known as Temmu, and Prince Ohotomo, aka Koubun.  Ohoama's side is sometimes called the Yoshino or even the Yamato court, as he had quote-unquote “retired” from the world and become a monk at a temple in Yoshino, south of Asuka, in the old area of Yamato.  Meanwhile, Ohotomo's supporters were the Afumi court—including most of the ministers running the state from the capital in Ohotsu, on the shores of lake Biwa, the area known as Afumi.  So let's take a look at what has happened so far, and then we can get into the events we are talking about today: a look at the soldiers who were fighting, their gear, and then some of the fighting that went on—specifically the fighting that happened in the Nara Basin.  I'll do my best to organize things based on the rough timeline that they seem to have occurred. Now previously, we had covered how Ohoama, brother to Naka no Oe aka Tenchi Tennou, had given up his title as Crown Prince and retired, supposedly to prevent any concerns that he might rebel and try to take the throne, but this wasn't enough for Ohotomo and the Court, who had begun to raise forces against him.  And so Ohoama and his supporters had just made a desperate dash eastwards, across the mountain roads to Ise.  From there they secured the Fuwa and Suzuka passes, two of the main routes to the East Countries.  Ohoama had then sent out requests for assistance to those same countries, hoping to find allies who would support him against the apparently legitimate government in Ohotsu. We are told that Ohoama was joined at this time by two of his sons: Prince Takechi and Prince Ohotsu. And here I want to pause to note something that I didn't point out last episode: These princes were not quite as old as you might think from the way they are portrayed in the Chronicle.  Prince Takechi, who had been given command of the troops at Fuwa Barrier, was only 19 years old.  Granted, that is only 4 years younger than their rival, Prince Ohotomo, and only a couple of years younger than the famous Minamoto Yoshitsune would be when he joined his brother in the Genpei Wars, over 500 years later.  Prince Ohotsu, however, was a bit younger, as he is believed to have been about 10 years old at this time, which likely explains why he is not so prominent in the narrative.  I mention this because the Nihon Shoki often omits details like age and can make it seem like these were all seasoned adult men and women, when it may have been that they were simply of high enough status to be mentioned, even though others were likely running their affairs for them.  In Prince Takechi's case, while he was likely old enough to take charge of the forces at Fuwa, it is also clear that his father was nearby and overseeing things, so everything didn't rest solely on his son's shoulders. Meanwhile, the Afumi court was raising its own soldiers.  While their delegation to the East was stopped at the captured Fuwa Pass, they also had sent word to the west.  Kibi and Tsukushi are specifically mentioned, but we know that they were raising troops elsewhere, including in the home province regions of Yamato and Kawachi. Here it should be noted that the Nihon Shoki is pretty clearly pro-Temmu, in other words pro-Ohoama.  There is some evidence from textual analysis, however, that the Temmu portions of the narrative differ from the Tenchi portions.  Torquil Duthie, in his book, “Man'yōshū and the Imperial Imagination in Early Japan”, recounts how scholarship has identified at least two—possibly three—different groups of compilers who managed different reigns.  The Tenchi narrative is more neutral, while the Temmu narrative provides a bit more of an accusatory tone, and both narratives provide slightly different accounts of the same events—notably the death of Naka no Oe, Prince Ohoama taking vows, and Prince Ohotomo succeeding his father.  On the other side, Duthie mentions  the Kaifusou, a collection of Sinitic style poetry created in 751, just 31 years after the Nihon Shoki, where in the introduction, the author seems to be much more sympathetic to Prince Ohotomo and his cause, implying that Oama was the one rising up against the legitimate government. I mention this just to help us remember that our primary source is not exactly neutral about all of this, and we should keep that in mind as we are trying to sort out what was going on.  The narrative also often makes it seem as though the outcome was inevitable, but we should remember that at the time all of these events were going down, the people involved couldn't have known how they were going to turn out— in the moment, anything could have happened, especially in times of war. Speaking of which, we know that the two sides were raising troops, so let's talk about what we know about those troops and what combat may have looked like at this time.  While we don't exactly have detailed accounts, there is a lot we can piece together through the archaeological record and other sources.  To that end we have evidence of armor and weapons, as well as shields, and we can also look at haniwa through the 6th and even early 7th century to give us an idea of local armor styles.  Let's first look back on how soldiers were conscripted.  Each household seems to have been responsible for supplying a soldier, when required.  They were also to supply their equipment.  This included a sword, armor, bows and arrows, as well as a flag and drum. In historical parades, today, we often see row upon row of soldiers kitted out in matching clothing, appearing relatively cohesive and well-regimented.  In truth it is hard to know just how similar any one group might have been.  Based on later historical examples, it is safe to assume that many of the soldiers may not have had much armor, if any, and even if they did it might have been made of wood or leather, which were unlikely to survive to the modern day. Of course, I would also question just how often they were able to afford everything mentioned.  And since we are told that as the government was gathering soldiers it was also opening up storehouses of weapons and armor, I suspect that indicates that not everyone had their own.  And even if they did, it may have been of questionable quality. That said, if a warrior did have armor, it was likely one of two types, variations of which were both found on the continent. The first type is characterized by a solid, circular cuirass, often called a “tankou”, or short armor.  These were made of strips of iron that were shaped on a wooden form and then riveted or tied together into a solid cuirass, which is why it is also called a type of “plate” armor.  One side of the armor was hinged and could open so that the wearer could get in.  There are some tankou with a hanging skirt of tassets that flare out as well, protecting the legs, and even examples of pieces that also go around the neck, shoulder guards, and arm guards.  The tankou seems to date from at least the 3rd or 4th century, with changes in design over time, and we know that it continued through at least the 6th century. Compare this to the keikou, or hanging armor.  Keikou was a kind of lamellar armor, made of individual scales, later known as “sane”.  These metal scales, also known as lamellae, were held together with lacing, and made for a much more flexible, and presumably comfortable, armor.  The tradeoff for this comfort was that keikou likely took a lot more labor to make, and thus were considered a more elite armor, possibly used by men on horseback or at least by those leading the troops.  Looking into the future a bit, we know that in the 8th century there were “tankou” and “keikou” being donated to the Shousouin repository at Toudaiji.  However, it isn't clear that “tankou” and “keikou” in the 8th century referred to exactly this kind of armor, and we may have been dealing with something else entirely, because there is a lacuna in our understanding of armor on the archipelago between the end of the Asuka period and the appearance of the more familiar yoroi in the Heian period comes about.  There are conjectured transitional armors, based on continental models, which are thought to have been used.  Still, at this very point in time, when Ohoama is mounting his rebellion against Ohotomo, the Keikou and Tankou are generally thought to have still been in use, and this is generally how you will see the two sides represented. As for weapons, perhaps the most common that we see is the bow and arrow.  Archery is extremely practical, not only for its ability to be used from a distance, but also because in times of peace people can use the same bows to hunt, thus making hunting prowess a kind of stand-in for military prowess.  The way of the bow—in fact the way of the horse and bow, or Kyuuba no Michi—would be the main pillar of martial prowess in the archipelago for centuries.  The iconic sword, while important—it was, after all, one of the three sacred regalia—was more of a side-arm, deployed in close quarters combat.  It was still important, as it could be easily carried with you.  However, it is more likely that massed troops might have had spears and various types of polearms, providing reach.  Those are harder to just casually carry around, however, especially if you are mainly using a bow.  Perhaps that is part of the reason that we don't hear as much about such weapons, and most of the focus seems to be on the archers and on swords. There were also at this time shields.  We know that the Hayato of southern Kyushu were particularly known for them, but there evidence that they were more widely used.  After all, a shield made of wood would have made an important defense against a rain of arrows coming from the enemy. As for the horses, some of them may have even had their own barding, or armor, though I suspect, again, that was rare, and reserved for elites.  All of this together gives us some idea of what it may have looked like when Ohoama and Ohotomo's forces engaged in battle, though it is still conjecture.  We know that they had spears, and swords, and bows.  We know that some of the first men that Prince Ohoama picked up on his journey was to conscript archers to his service, who then were pressed into taking a government post station.    We also don't necessarily see a lot of individual fighting described in the records, though there are exceptions. Later on, there was a tradition of individual warriors calling out challenges in the midst of battle, that became an accepted practice in the early culture of the bushi, or samurai, but we don't see that in the Chronicles.    Certainly we see moments of individual valor which are remembered, likely because of the benefits that the hero's descendants could then claim for themselves.   But for the most part it seems that the people actually doing the fighting were groups of conscripted soldiers, not the hired warriors of later periods.  Even among groups like the Mononobe, the Be of the Warriors, it isn't clear that they would have been the ones on the front lines—not if they could help it, anyway.  Most of these were farmers and similar commoners, who were called up to fight as necessary.  Some of them may have seen action over on the Korean peninsula, or even in local skirmishes.  Others would have been fresh out of the fields, joining the ranks for the first time.  They were not exactly volunteers, but also didn't have much of a choice.  It was the draft on steroids. I also suspect that the act of conscription, where a soldier was offered up by a household, or family,, meant that desertion would mean that their family would be punished. While the elite generals providing the men were no doubt gauging how this would affect their own political and economic fortunes, I imagine that the average soldier had much less agency and could look forward to many fewer rewards.  In fact, I suspect his main goal would have been one of survival.  Perhaps if one fought well, they could earn something more for themselves, and perhaps there were cultural concepts of loyalty to one's local elites and leadership.  And maybe there were leaders who inspired them to do great things.  However, works like the Nihon Shoki were rarely concerned with the lives of the common people, except when it shined a light on the sovereigns and their court.   It was much more concerned with how this affected the upper caste of society. There is also the question about just what kind of fighting this system led to.  Again, these are not the bushi—a warrior class who prided themselves on their martial prowess.  And neither were they standing armies.  While there were likely some who regularly served and trained and found they had a skill at war, how many were simple farmers who were now holding a spear instead of a spade?  These are things to keep in mind as we follow along with tales of glorious victory or ignoble defeat. So, that's a glimpse at who was actually doing the fighting.  As for the timeline of the battle, let's get into it.  But first, a caveat:  as we should be used to by now, the exact chronology of the events listed in the Nihon Shoki is not entirely clear.  The Nihon Shoki provides a narrative, but often it includes actions that took several days or even weeks on a single date where the events apparently culminated.  Using cues, such as “one day later” or such things, we can piece together a narrative, but I may not have it 100% accurate.  It doesn't help that the Nihon Shoki seems to focus on different campaigns separately, even though much of it was happening at the same time.  That's compounded by the fact that all of this was being recorded much later, and so there is also a great possibility that even some of the seemingly clear dates were also wrong, or were adjusted to make for a better flow in the narrative.  So I'm going to do my best to piece together what I roughly feel was the chronological order, but just be aware that dates may not be all that precise.    In the coming conflict we see several main arenas.  First, there is the area around Lake Biwa, from the Fuwa pass towards Ohotsu.  This was Ohoama's main path to try and put an end to this whole affair—to make his way to Ohotsu, the capital, and cut off the head of the snake.  To do that he would have to leave his defensive position and venture out around the lake, where Afumi forces no doubt lay in wait.  At the same time, there was also fierce fighting in the Nara Basin, with Yoshino and Afumi forces clashing there across the plains.  And we cannot forget the Kafuka, or Kouka, pass over to Suzuka.  If the Afumi forces could push through to Suzuka, then they could march along the coastal plains of Mie up through Owari and come at Ohoama's forces from behind. In previous episodes we covered the leadup to this part of the conflict, and while there had been some fighting at the post stations on the road to Suzuka, as well as captured envoys at Fuwa Pass, so far we haven't seen any major fighting.  If the timeline in the Nihon Shoki is to be believed, the first serious clashes seem to have occurred in the Yamato region and the Nara basin. In general, however, there seems to have been two main campaigns.  There was the fighting in the Nara Basin, and then there was the fighting along the shores of Lake Biwa. Everything started off at the end of the 6th month with Ohoama's mad dash to capture the passes at Suzuka and Fuwa, where he waited while he gathered up men from the Eastern countries.  While that was happening, the Afumi court was out recruiting men for their own war.  This would lead to some of the earliest formal battles between the two sides taking place in the Nara Basin, originally a recruitment center, it turned into a battle zone.  Yoshino aligned forces would push north, only to be blocked by armies coming down from the capital at Ohotsu, as well as forces coming through the gap between Yamato and Kawachi, where the Yamato river leaves the basin through the western mountains.  The fighting happened largely over the course of a week or so.  It started around the 29th day of the 6th month, and seems to have ended between the 4th or 6th day of the 7th month.  So keep that in mind. As you may recall from last episode, two brothers, Ohotomo no Muraji no Makuda and Ohotomo no Muraji no Fukei, upon hearing that Ohoama was rising up, both feigned illness, using that as an excuse to leave the court at Ohotsu and return to their family compounds in the Yamato region.  From there, Makuda made haste to catch up with Ohoama and his men, but his brother, Fukei, stayed behind to see what he could do in Yamato. Originally, Fukei's success was limited.  He started calling various allied families together and tried to drum up support for Ohoama, but he could only gather a few tens of men.  Not the hundreds, let alone thousands, that would be needed.  At the same time, the Afumi court was conscripting men of the Yamato region into service.  This was being organized by Hodzumi no Obito no Momotari and his younger brother, Hodzumi no Obito no Ihoye, along with Mononobe no Obito no Hiuga, who had all been sent to Yamato on the orders of the Afumi court, apparently arriving shortly after Fukei.  This group set up their base of operations at the Wokamoto palace—it was, after all, the official government presence and they were the official government representatives —and they used the grounds west of Houkouji, aka Asukadera, as their assembly grounds. Ohotomo no Fukei knew that something would have to be done.  If those conscripted Yamato soldiers were formed into a proper army and sent out, it could cause a lot of trouble for Ohoama and his men.  And fortunately, Fukei had a man on the inside: apparent ally, Sakanouhe no Atahe no Kumage, the officer in charge of the Wokamoto Palace, working for Prince Takazaka who resided there.  And so Fukei had a plan—he would impersonate the Royal Prince Takechi, son of Ohoama, and pretend to lead a force of cavalry to attack the camp at Asukadera.  To strengthen the illusion, Fukei would come in from the north, which is where Prince Takechi and his men would presumably be coming from.  Now remember, Fukei only had tens of people that were actually on his side at this point, and the camp was presumably much larger.  If they didn't fall for his ruse, Fukei would be marching straight to his death. Fukei marshalled his troops at the house of Kudara, which is to say “Baekje”, and then left out of the south gate.  He then had an accomplice, Hada no Miyatsuko no Kuma, dressed in nothing but a loincloth, mount a horse and gallop as fast as he could towards the camp.  You can imagine the confusion in the camp as this wild, naked man gallops up to them in a panic and starts telling them that Prince Takechi and his men were on their way with a huge force. When the conscripted soldiers heard this, they panicked.  While the men were gathered, it seems that they hadn't yet been outfitted with weapons and armor, so the entire camp broke and fled.  And so Fukei was able to waltz in with his tens of men and take the camp at Asukadera, capturing Prince Takazaka and those sent from Ohotsu to levy troops.  Fukei's ally, Kumage, the man on the inside, helped with this, along with the soldiers under the command of him and the Aya no Atahe.  And so they were able to disperse the conscripted Yamato forces before they were even assembled.  However, it turned out that someone was missing.  Hodzumi no Omi no Momotari, who had been appointed leader of the operation, was not at Asukadera.  It turns out that he was over at the Woharida Palace, where he was reviewing the armory, taking out the weapons and armor for the troops that he thought were still over at Asukadera. And so Fukei continued the ruse: he sent a messenger to summon Momotari, claiming to be a summons from Prince Takechi himself. Momotari, hearing this, likely knew that he had lost, but he apparently maintained his dignity.  He didn't run away or rush to the camp.  Instead he approached on horseback in a leisurely fashion.  When he reached the encampment, now under Fukei's command, one of the soldiers shouted at Momotari to get off his horse, but Momotari, likely trying to keep what remained of his dignity, was slow in doing so.  The men around him didn't care one whit for his dignity, however.  They grabbed his collar and pulled him off of the horse, dragging him to the ground.  He was shot with an arrow and then a man drew his sword and struck him and killed him.  We aren't even told who did this deed, just how it was done. As for the others, Momonatari's brother, Hodzumi no Ihoye and Mononobe no Hiuga were bound, but eventually they were released amongst the troops, where they were no doubt watched carefully.  Princes Takazaka no Ou and Wakasa no Ou, the representatives of the Afumi court in Asuka, were made to follow behind the army.  With this victory under his belt, Ohotomo no Fukei sent messengers to Prince Ohoama, at the Fuwa pass, to let him know what had happened.  When the messengers finally reached Ohoama we are told that he was quite pleased with the result.  After all, it meant that his rearguard was that much more secure. We are told that these events took place on or about the 29th day of the 6th month, around the same time that Ohoama was overseeing the troops at Wazami, only a few days after he and the real Prince Takechi had made their way to that camp.  Things were evolving quickly.  Fukei's success drew others to his banner.  Miwa no Kimi no Takechimaro, Kamo no Kimi no Yemishi, and othes all joined Fukei's forces, “like an echo”.  With a now more sizeable force, it seems that Fukei believed he was ready to take the fight to the Afumi court.  He and his advisors drew up plans for invading Afumi, selecting men to be deputy commanders and military commanders, providing a hierarchy and some organization.  From there, a few days later, he began to march north from Asuka, towards Nara. Now Nara at this point was just a name for the northwest area of the basin—they probably didn't even think of it as the Nara basin back then.  But it was along the road that led north, through the mountains, and from there through Yamashiro and eventually on to Afumi.  As Fukei was headed north, however,  he received word that there was another force coming from the Kawachi in the west.  And so he split his forces.  Sakamoto no Omi no Takara and others were sent with some 300 troops to take a defensive position at Tatsuta.  Sami no Kimi no Sukunamaro was also sent with another several hundred men to Ohosaka… no, not that Ohosaka.  Afusaka in modern Kashiba, in western Nara Basin.  This area would have been a strategic defensive point for any troops taking the road from Kawachi, so if anyone got past Sakamoto no Takara, Sukunamaro and his troops would be waiting. The now General Fukei also sent Kamo no Yemishi with another several hundred men to guard the Iwate road, to defend that approach as well.  Now Sakamoto no Takara, who had been sent to engage the troops coming from Kawachi, reached the area of Hiraishi when he heard that Afumi forces were occupying the nearby castle of Takayasu mountain.  You may recall that Takayasu was one of the Korean style fortresses that had been built in anticipation of a possible invasion from the continent, and it had even been repaired a few times.  Now it was being used not against an outside enemy, but in an internal conflict. Takara and his men marched up the mountain, intending to attack the castle, and here we should probably give a better idea of just what this castle was like.  If you think of a modern Japanese castle the thing that likely stands out, no pun intended, is the Tenshukaku, or donjon; the multi-storied tower located somewhere inside the walls and moats of the castle proper.  This would be an ideal location to spy over the walls and see where the enemy were, as well as an area from which one could make a last ditch stand. The castles of the Asuka period were not like this.  They were built off of a continental model, and their defining feature was not the donjon—though they likely did have gate and guard towers set up so that one could see attacking forces.  No, the defining feature was really the walls.  Long, compacted-earth walls, possibly lined with stone, which snaked around the top of a mountain.  This castle style leveraged the natural contours of existing mountain tops to provide its defense.  It didn't hurt that they also provided clear views of what was happening on the plains below, and required attacking troops to march up a steep mountain climb and then attack uphill.  The tradeoff was that these weren't the kind of places that people would live, when most of the infrastructure of the state was in the fertile plains and surrounding areas.  So these castles had granaries to keep troops fed, and perhaps some basic buildings erected within the walls, but they were largely a practical design. You can still go see the Takayasu ruins, today, and you don't have to hike up the mountain as Takara and his men did.  Instead you can take a cable car up to the top, or even a regular car on the roads that drive up to the old castle site, though how much you can see I'm not sure.  There are also other castle ruins and even old kofun on the mountain, as its prominence has been recognized as important in many different centuries. There likely weren't a lot of troops manning the castle, certainly not enough that they felt they had much chance of defending it.  So when Takara and his men made it up to the top, they Afumi forces burned the granaries, so as to deny him any supplies, and then took off, discretion being the better part of valor.  Takara and his men spent the evening at the castle, no doubt recovering from their hike up.  Remember, this wasn't just a leisurely stroll—they were no doubt fully kitted out for war.  When they woke the next morning they looked out over the surrounding countryside, of which they now had fantastic views, and   Takara noticed a large army coming down along the Ohotsu-Tajihi road.  They carried flags, which I don't know how Takara could have seen at that point, which identified them as being the enemy - troops of the Afumi general, Iki no Fubito no Karakuni. And so Takara and his men descended from Takayasu, crossed the Ega River—now known as the Ishi river, and engaged Karakuni's army.  They were only 300 men, however, and Karakuni had a much larger forcem so  Takara was unable to maintain a defense.  And so they made a strategic withdrawal—in other words retreated—back to Kashikosaka, apparently a part of Afusaka, where Ki no Omi no Oho'oto had been set to guard.  So Ohotomo and the Afumi court finally scored a win. Besides his victory against Takara and his men, we are also told that Karakuni had come upon Kume no Omi no Shihoko, the governor of Kawachi.  Shihoko had been gathering troops to go fight for Ohoama, but he was found out by Karakuni.  Karakuni captured him and was going to execute him, but before he could, Shihoko took his own life, instead. As Takara was retreating and setting up a new defensive position, Fukei had his own problems to worry about.  As he was camped with his troops on Mt. Narayama, one of his men, Aradawo no Atahe no Akamaro, addressed him and suggested that they should make sure to fortify Asuka, just in case.  Fukei agreed, and sent Akamaro as well as Imbe no Kobito to guard the Okamoto Palace in Asuka.  They also made sure to remove the planks from any bridges, using them to setup fortifications along the road.  Now any army that wished to cross would either have to swim or they would need to come across the narrow beams that were all that was left of the bridges.  This was not ideal at the best of times, but you can imagine doing it as troops on the other side were shooting arrows at you.  And yet this has become a near classic trope in Japanese war stories and it won't be the only time it comes up in various historical contexts.  It wouldn't even be the only time it shows up in this current conflict. A day later, Fukei found himself engaged with an Afumi general, Ohono no Kimi no Hatayasu, on Mt. Narayama itself.  Despite Fukei having had time to set up a defensive position, the Afumi forces overwhelmed Fukei's men.  They were defeated and Fukei himself barely escaped with his life.  Fukei fled south with only one or two men, also on horseback, with Hatayasu hot on his heels, only stopping when they reached Hatta and the Yamato river.  At that point the fortifications were in place, and Hatayasu likely knew that any trying to cross the river after Fukei would likely not go nearly as well as it did at Narayama. As for General Fukei he kept going all the way until he reached Sumizaka, which appears to be in Uda.  There he fell in with Okizome no Muraji no Usagi, at the head of several tens of thousands of men.  Usagi had been with Ohoama , but upon hearing of the fighting in Yamato, Ohoama had sent him  and others to go back through the Suzuka pass to provide reinforcements.  One can only imagine how happy Fukei was at this point to see Usagi and all of thise men.  Fukei turned back around and encamped at Kanatsunawi—possibly modern Imai-cho, Kashihara city.  There he was able to gather many of the dispersed troops back into a force once again. About this time, Fukei heard that the Afumi forces were also approaching along the Afusaka road.  So now they were approaching from both the north and the west.  They were also taking several different roads—inside the largely flat area of the Nara Basin, they likely had several choices.  Takara and Oho-oto had been unable to meet the enemy and had kept retreating, likely seeking a defensible position.  As they did this, Fukei came from the east with his reinforcements.  He made it to where the roads branched at Tahema—modern Taima—where he fought with Iki no Karakuni nearby Ashi-kie pond, possibly somewhere near modern Chimata.  During the battle, one of Fukei's men, a brave warrior known to us only as “Kume”, drew his sword and rushed straight into the midst of the enemy army.  Of course one lone man wasn't likely to do much, but he inspired a cavalry charge, and men on horseback followed closely at his heels.  Seeing this force bearing quickly down on them, the Afumi troops broke, and soon it was a rout.  Fukei's men pursued, cutting down the Afumi soldiers as they fled, until Fukei finally reined them in. At this point, Fukei then admonished his troops that their goal was to take out the ringleaders, not to just indiscriminately murder the common people.  Remember, which side of the battlefield you ended up fighting on was largely a function of who had conscripted you, and Fukei evidently knew this.  As the men were still retreating, though, Fukei noticed that the Afumi general, Karakuni – one of those ringleaders - had gotten himself separated from his men.  Fukei ordered Kume—presumably the same one who had charged the army in the first place—to shoot at him, but Kume's arrow missed, and Karakuni made his escape.  Rather than pursuing, Fukei returned back to his headquarters. Once there, Fukei now learned that there were enemy forces approaching from the East, as well.  So Fukei took the army and divided it into three, defending the Upper, Middle, and Lower roads, and he took personal charge of the forces on the middle road, likely so that he could easily keep in touch with the other forces.  He was also waiting for the next challenge, and he didn't have to wait for long: the Afumi general Inukai no Muraji no Isogimi approached along the Middle Road.  He halted at Muraya, but his deputy commander, Ihoriwi no Miyatsuko no Kujira, attacked Fukei's camp with 200 specially picked soldiers.  Now it turns out that when they reached the camp, there were only a few people actually there at the time, including one Tokumaro, described as a slave of Ohowidera temple, and four “people following the army” – in other words, these might not have been actual soldiers.  .  Nevertheless, together this small group rallied, formed an advance guard and went forward, shooting arrows at Kujira's forces.  Kujira, not knowing that Fukei's camp was all but empty, halted his advance. Meanwhile, over on the Upper Road, Miwa no Takechimaro and Okizome no Usagi, who had been sent by Ohoama from Fuwa, fought with the Afumi army at the Hashi Misasagi—which is assumed to be the Hashihaka kofun, and they overwhelmingly defeated the Afumi army there, such that they was able to pivot from there and swing their forces over to the Middle road.  There they slammed into the flank of Kujira's army, who had stopped to trade blows with Fukei's camp.  Many of the common soldiers were killed, and the general, Kujira, ran off, mounted on a white horse.  Unfortunately for him, the horse took a misstep and tumbled into a muddy-rice field. Kujira was bogged down in the mud and having trouble getting out.  General Fukei, seeing this, sent a brave soldier of Kahi to shoot at Kujira, but as the soldier came up to the edge of the rice paddy, Kujira whipped his horse vigorously, and got it to extricate itself and Kujira, who galloped off and escaped.  Fukei, for his part, returned again to his headquarters and camped with his men there.  Though they were ready for another conflict, nothing ever came.  The Afumi forces had withdrawn.  The battle for the Nara basin was over, and the Yoshino forces were victorious. General Fukei, however, was anything but finished.  Remember, he had planned to take the fight to the Afumi court, and so, having subdued the enemy forces in Yamato—which is to say the Nara basin—Fukei marched out through Afusaka to Naniwa, and then marched on Yamazaki, where he set up camp.  From there, he sent messengers to all the governors of the Western Provinces.  He forced them to give up their keys, their posting-bells, and their posting tallies—basically he had them formally submit to the Yoshino faction, and thus to Ohoama. Meanwhile, Ohoama had his own campaign to conduct, and it kicked off in the middle of Fukei's defense of the Yamato Home Province.  He also would engage various generals in battle, but we'll save that campaign for Part Four. But before we go I do want to point out, once again: this wasn't a simple and straightforward matter of attack and defense.  Notice that generals on both sides sometimes were victorious and sometimes had to flee.  You can only imagine how, after the defeat at Narayama, General Fukei must have felt that all hope was lost, only to run into a force ten thousand strong come to relive him and his paltry troops.  But it could just as easily have been that he didn't make it.  In fact, how many warriors died?  Heroically, perhaps, but still died.  And if there were no descendants to carry on their name and remember their deeds, then who knows how many people just didn't get written about at all.  And then there are all of those common soldiers.  Individuals without any recorded name, but who nonetheless were there and who fought. They may not have been the people that later authors cared to write about, and yet they were all someone's child, and possibly their sibling or parent.  They loved and laughed, and certainly died.  All to determine who would sit next upon the Yamato throne.  One has to wonder if winning or losing really changed anything for them, or perhaps they won simply by surviving. And on that cheerful thought, I'll take my leave.  Until next time, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

Wood ear mushrooms may not be a common ingredient in everyday Japanese home cooking, but they are believed to have been introduced from China during the Heian period. In this episode, Melbourne-based cooking instructor Mayu Tomaru shares a recipe using wood ear mushrooms—an ingredient you can find at most Asian grocery stores. - キクラゲは、日本の家庭料理ではあまり登場しない食材かもしれませんが、実は平安時代に中国から伝わったとされています。メルボルン在住の料理講師・都丸真由さんのコーナー「オーストラリアで食べる」、今回はアジアングローサリーでも手に入るキクラゲを使ったレシピです。

Making mokuhanga takes dedication. It demands energy, a sense of empowerment, and joy in the process. It's that passion that pushes you forward, to evolve and mature within the art form. On this episode of The Unfinished Print: A Mokuhanga Podcast, I speak with printmaker Andrea Starkey. Andrea is deeply passionate about mokuhanga—the way it feels, the process of creating, and how each print takes her on a personal and creative journey. We discuss how she expresses herself through mokuhanga, her themes, and her love of nature. We also explore the world of selling prints, and how to navigate being an artist in the age of AI. And as always, we dive into Andrea's tools, her paper, and how she uses them to create her beautiful work. Please follow The Unfinished Print and my own mokuhanga work on Instagram @andrezadoroznyprints or email me theunfinishedprint@gmail.com Notes: may contain a hyperlink. Simply click on the highlighted word or phrase. Artists works follow after the note if available. Pieces are mokuhanga unless otherwise noted. Dimensions are given if known. Print publishers are given if known. Andrea Starkey - website, Instagram, Etsy  Tree No. 43. -  4" x 11"  renderer - is a system, program, or process that takes data and converts it into a visual or usable format, usually for display on a screen or output in some other way. What it renders and how depends on the content. reduction printmaking - is a process in printmaking where the printmaker cuts away on a piece of wood, or linoleum. After every carving, the printmaker makes an impression with pigments, beginning with lighter colours, gradually using darker colours. William H. Mays has a fine description of reduction on his website, here.  Mike Lyon  -  is an American artist. His medium has varied throughout his career such as "square tiles," or "pixels," through to making mokuhanga, monoprinting, and machine-assisted etching, drawing and mezzotint. Mike Lyon also has a large woodblock print collection which he has curated for the public, here. More information about his work can be found, here. Mike's interview with The Unfinished Print can be found, here.  Clover - 12" x 12" (2017) Dick Blick Art Supplies - is an art supply store with various brick and mortar stores throughout the United States, as well as online. Founded in 1911 by Dick Blick in Galesburg, Illinois, BLICK, as it's more commonly known, sells various types of art supplies, much like Jerry's Artarama. More info, here. Sekishu washi - is a traditional Japanese paper from the Iwami region in Shimane Prefecture, with a history spanning around 1300 years and references dating back to the Heian period. Made primarily from mitsumata and gampi plant fibers, it is known for its strength, flexibility, smooth texture, and resistance to damage, making it ideal for printing, calligraphy, and fine stationery. The paper is still crafted using traditional methods such as nagashizuki and tamezuki, which involve screens made of bamboo or Japanese nutmeg and the use of aibika as a natural binder. These time-honored techniques and materials have contributed to the recognition and preservation of Sekishu washi as a significant cultural craft. More information regarding Sekishu washi can be found at Kokei Japan, here.  Akua - are water-based pigments used in intaglio, mokuhanga, and monotype.  stair treads - are the horizontal parts of a staircase that you step on as you go up or down. They are the flat surfaces where your feet land. They can also be used in different art forms such as sculpture, prints, and architectural artistic practices.  kitakata - is a high-quality Japanese washi paper traditionally made in Fukushima Prefecture, using Philippine gampi fibers and sulphite pulp. The gampi provides a natural sheen, smooth texture, and resistance to moisture and insects, while the sulphite pulp adds strength and consistency. Known for its warm tone and moderate absorbency, Kitakata is ideal for bookbinding, mokuhanga, and other types of printmaking. Its surface holds fine details well, making it a favorite among artists for both traditional and contemporary work. sepia - is a reddish brown colour. Can be found in various pigments.  Baren Forum - is one of the oldest continuous online communities dedicated to mokuhanga. It serves artists, scholars, and enthusiasts who engage with the medium through both practical and academic approaches. The forum is especially known for its print exchanges, where practitioners share their work based on a shared theme, size, or topic. More information about the Baren Forum and its activities can be found, here.  Woodblock Dreams - was a mokuhanga block started in 2005 by Annie Bissett, a mokuhanga printmaker based in the United States. Annie's new blog can be found, here. Annie's interview with The Unfinished Print can be found, here.  Saitō Kiyoshi (1907-1997) - was a Japanese woodblock printmaker and artist who worked in the sōsaku hanga style of mokuhanga. HIs fame outside of Japan was fairly comprehensive with his peak fame being in the 1950's and 1960's. For a comprehensive book on his life and times, Saitō Kiyoshi: Graphic Awakening published by The John & Mable Ringling Museum is an excellent source. Can be found, here. Lecture by Dr. Paget about Saitō can be found, here. My interview with Professor Paget can be found, here.  Village of Miho - 16.81" × 11.69" (1960) Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) - a watercolorist, oil painter, and woodblock printmaker. Is associated with the resurgence of the woodblock print in Japan, and in the West. It was his early relationship with Watanabe Shōzaburō, having his first seven prints printed by the Shōzaburō atelier. This experience made Hiroshi believe that he could hire his own carvers and printers and produce woodblock prints, which he did in 1925.  Seta Bridge - 10.83" × 15.59" (1933) Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892) was a renowned Japanese woodblock printmaker and one of the last great masters of the ukiyo-e tradition. He is best known for his dramatic and emotionally intense imagery, particularly in series like One Hundred Aspects of the Moon and Thirty-Six Ghosts. Working during a time of cultural upheaval in the Meiji period, Yoshitoshi blended traditional techniques with modern themes, Yoshitoshi is famous as a print designer for his expressive linework, rich colour, and innovations in print design during this period of Japanese history. Unknown reprint - Date unknown Echizen - is a region in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, known for its long history of papermaking. The area is home to many paper artisans. One notable figure is Iwano Ichibei. He is a Living National Treasure in papermaking and the ninth generation of his family still making paper today. More information can be found here.in English, and here in Japanese.  monotype print - is a unique print created from an image painted or drawn on a smooth surface, such as glass or metal, and then transferred to paper. Unlike most printmaking methods, where multiple copies of the same image can be produced, a monotype typically has a single, one-of-a-kind image. It's called a "mono" type because it is not part of an edition like traditional prints (e.g., lithographs, etchings), where you can make multiple copies.  Okawara washi - is a traditional Japanese paper made in Japan and sold by Awagami Paper. It is typically composed of an even blend of Japanese kozo and Manila hemp, though some versions may also include wood pulp. The paper is known for its strength, flexibility, and subtle texture, making it suitable for printmaking and other fine art applications. While weights may vary, Okawara usually ranges between 50 and 75 gsm. Dropshipping - is a business model where a seller doesn't keep products in stock, but instead sells products that are shipped directly from a third-party supplier, like a wholesaler or manufacturer, to the customer. Narcissus no. 4 - 6" x 8"  © Popular Wheat Productions Opening and closing musical credit - background noise from Madison Square Park in New York City.  logo designed and produced by Douglas Batchelor and André Zadorozny  Disclaimer: Please do not reproduce or use anything from this podcast without shooting me an email and getting my express written or verbal consent. I'm friendly :)  Слава Українi If you find any issue with something in the show notes please let me know. ***The opinions expressed by guests in The Unfinished Print podcast are not necessarily those of André Zadorozny and of Popular Wheat Productions.***

This episode we are looking at the early years of the official reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tenno, including the building of a brand new capital on the shores of Lake Biwa. For more information, see: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-126 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 126:  New Beginnings The local farmers couldn't help but talk.  There was so much construction, but it wasn't entirely clear what was being built.  The land between the mountains and the lake had been neatly groomed fields, but now that the government workmen had moved in, all of those fields were being cleared.  This new construction was much larger than anything that people had seen before.  Rocks were coming in from far flung quarries, and local kilns were being set up to create tiles, while woodcutters were sent into the forests to bring logs to the site. There were various stories about what was going on—a new provincial government office, or perhaps a new temple, but perhaps the most outlandish was that this was going to be some kind of royal palace.  The sovereign himself was taking in interest in this little slice of Afumi, and he was going to abandon the Home Territories of Yamato and bring his entire court to the shores of Lake Biwa. What a far-fetched story!  …Wasn't it? Last episode we recapped a lot of the history of Prince Naka no Oe and how he had come to this point: the Isshi Incident, the Taika reforms, as well as the reigns of his uncle, Prince Karu, aka Koutoku Tennou, and his mother, Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tennou.  With Takara Hime's death, Naka no Oe was now – finally, as he might have thought -- running things officially.  He had prosecuted the war in Baekje, and with that loss, he had turned his focus back to the archipelago.  He now had refugees to settle, and defenses to set up.  And then there were the embassies that would be coming, in an apparent attempt to normalize relations post-conflict.  That could only go so far, however, given that Tang and Silla had simply turned their war efforts against Goguryeo.  So one imagines that any diplomatic discussions were held with the understanding that the international order was still in flux. And so we arrive in the 8th month of 665, as some of the first defensive castles were being erected.  That same month, Tamna—the kingdom on the modern island of Jeju—sent ambassadors to the Yamato court.  The diplomatic ties between Yamato and Tamna were a relatively recent occurrence, but with Baekje gone, one wonders if Yamato wasn't feeling out a new alliance on the continent.  That said, Tamna does not appear to have been a major player on the international stage.    They had been a tributary of Baekje, and may have even been one of the last holdouts of the proto-Japonic language for a long time.  Indeed, a 15th century Joseon history records a foundation myth of Tamna that emphasizes close early ties with the Japanese archipelago. The following month saw another visit by Tang ambassadors, only a year after Guo Wucong had come to the court.  Guo Wucong had been wined and dined, and things seem to have gone well, as this time he returned, but he wasn't the one leading the embassy this time.  That honor went to Liu Degao, sub-prefect of Yizhou, among his many titles.  Yizhou is the same location where the previous missions from Yamato to the Tang court had made landfall.  Presumably, Liu Degao would have had experience with the embassies that passed through Yizhou, so he seems a logical choice to be sent over to the archipelago. This seems like an escalation, with a more titled ambassador leading the party. It is possible that the Tang were trying to not only reset their relationship with Yamato, but also attempt to woo them to their side.  The Tang likely knew that if they defeated Goguryeo, then they would have another problem to work out:  The alliance with Silla.  At the moment both Tang and Silla were in a partnership of convenience, but the Tang empire didn't get where it was by just giving up territory. And Silla was, itself, ambitious.  It would be in the Tang dynasty's best interest to have Yamato on its side in case Silla became a problem.  At the very least, the Tang court could have just been trying to make sure that Yamato would stay out of any continental entanglements, such as by supporting Goguryeo. Within the Yamato court, it is unclear which way, exactly, they were leaning at this point.  The court was clearly building defensive positions—fortresses and more.  At the same time, there were likely those who welcomed any return to stable relations with the Tang.  After all, there were still Wa in Chang'an and elsewhere, and there was still a hunger in the archipelago for the books and other goods that the Silk Road could provide.  On the other hand, they may have felt more at home with Goguryeo, or even Silla.  The bonds with the Korean peninsula were older and likely stronger.  And, as long as the Tang Empire was busy with other states, then perhaps they would be too preoccupied to attack Yamato. Liu Degao and his entourage had arrived at Tsushima on the 28th day of the 7th month.  They would have been put up there for a time, and entertained.  If this embassy followed later conventions, they would have likely pulled into a harbor, like the one near Kofunakoshi.  This is a narrow spot between the two parts of Tsushima, where we know that in the 9th century, ships from the Tang empire would stop, register goods and people, and likely have them transferred to Japanese ships.  All of the checking and cataloging would happen  at nearby Bairinji temple. Even if they didn't have to transport everything to another ship, it is likely that they would held at Tsushima for a while for security purposes.  Tsushima was ideal, both for its distance, halfway between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago, but also for its shape, with numerous places that ships could sit at anchor in secluded bays away from any weather or rough seas that could otherwise cause problems. We don't know exactly what the Tang embassy's stay was like, but we know that they were at Tsushima for roughly two months, which was probably the time it took to get a message to the Yamato court and back.  We know how long it was because we learn that it is on the 20th day of the 9th month that they finally made landfall at Tsukushi, or Kyushu, and two days later they forwarded a letter-case to the Yamato court. Two months later, we know they were at the court, as there was a banquet held for Liu Degao on the 13th day of the 11th month, and then a month after that, Liu Degao and the rest of the mission were presented gifts, after which they left and returned to the Tang court.  We are also told that Mori no Kimi no Ohoishi, along with Sakahibe no Muraji no Iwashiki and Kimi no Kishi no Harima all went to the Tang court that same month, no doubt traveling with Degao and Wucong. On the first month of the following year, Neungnu of Goguryeo was sent to the Yamato court to offer tribute.  On the same day, the 11th day of the first month, Tamna also sent someone identified as Prince Siyeo to offer presents.  Immediately, I'm wondering about the way that this is presented.  Both of these states – Goguryeo and Tamna - were allies of the former Baekje kingdom.  I have to wonder how the Goguryeo ships made their way—did they come down the western side of the peninsula, through the Bohai sea, and thus past possible Tang patrols between their peninsular and continental territories, or did they head through the East Sea, aka the Japan Sea, where they would have to pass by the coast of Silla, whom they were also not on great terms with?  The fact that both missions are mentioned at the same time suggests that maybe the Goguryeo embassy sailed down to Tamna, on Jeju Island, and then the two groups made their way over to Yamato together from there. Other things about this entry to note is that the Chroniclers use different terms for these visits to the Yamato court.  Goguryeo uses a term that Aston translates as “offering tribute” while Tamna uses a different term indicating that they were “offering presents”.  This may be as simple as the difference in the various relationships between the polities, as viewed by the Chroniclers.  After all, there was a long relationship between Yamato and Goguryeo, which was considered one of the three Han, or Samhan.  Whether true or not, I could certainly see the Chroniclers feeling that Goguryeo was in a subordinate relationship with Yamato.  Tamna, on the other hand, was a more recent addition to the Yamato diplomatic sphere.  As such, it would be understandable, to me if the Chroniclers still saw it as a more independent entity. It also may hint at different messages being communicated.  As far as we can tell, Tamna wasn't under direct threat by the Tang empire—though they may have been feeling a little bit of heat, given the fall of Baekje and the Tang empire's new outpost on the peninsula.  Goguryeo, however, was under more direct threat, and had been in conflict with the Tang for years.  On top of that, based on what we can tell, it seems that Yeong Gaesomun, the despot who had been ruling Goguryeo and helping it defend against the Tang, had just passed away.  It may have been that the Goguryeo court was seeking support against Tang and Silla, as they were in a moment of instability, themselves.  As such, “Tribute” might indicate that they were more formally petitioning Yamato for support. Goguryeo envoy Neungnu left about 5 months later, on the 4th day of the 6th month but then another envoy, this time Minister Eulsyang Oemchu, arrived a little more than four months later.  Much like with the Tang, this feels like Goguryeo was upping the ante, sending higher ranking officials to negotiate with Yamato.  That lends some credence to the theory that there was something of a bidding war going on for Yamato's involvement in international affairs.  For Yamato, however, it would seem that getting involved in continental affairs was hardly something they were itching to do.  Instead, they continued their moves to fortify. In local events, we know that on the 11th day of the 10th month of 665, while the Liu Degao delegation was still in Yamato, there was a great “review”, by which they seem to mean a sutra reading, at Uji.  It is unclear just where this was held, as I haven't found reference to any particular temple.  However, it does indicate that there was activity in the area. Uji is probably most popular, today, for its role as a setting in the Tale of Genji.  There indeed numerous reminders there of the Heian period, including the hall of Ujigami Shrine, and the famous Hou-ou-do, or Phoenix Hall, of the Byoudouin. In 1053, Fujiwara Yorimichi inherited the villa from his father, Fujiwara Michinaga, and he converted it into a Pure Land temple.  Michinaga is thought to have been one of the people on whom Murasaki Shikibu based the character of the Shining Prince, Hikaru Genji.  That's all too late for this moment in the Chronicles, of course., but we do have earlier references to Uji as a place, as well as in various names.  It seems to have been part of the territory of the Hata, who controlled much of the area of modern Kyoto and environs.  There is a temple, Houjouin, also known as Hashidera, which claims to date back to the 7th century, and may have been the site of the above-mentioned sutra reading in 665.  According to the Temple's own legend, it was built around 604, when Hata no Kawakatsu built the famous Uji bridge, or Hashi, on the orders of Prince Umayado, aka Shotoku Taishi.  Other sources give the date as 646.  The temple was rebuilt in the 13th century, and as far as I can tell, nothing remains of the original temple, but it is possible that it was the site of this review. The next non-Diplomatic record of the Chronicles is from the 3rd month in 666.  The Crown Prince went to the house of Saheki no Komaro no Muraji, paying a sympathy call as Saheki appears to have passed away after having been gravely ill.  Saheki no Komaro no Muraji was one of those who had helped Naka no Oe in the Isshi Incident.  He had been introduced to the plot by Nakatomi no Kamatari, and then critical in the literal execution at the court.  He later led forces against Furubito no Oe, assuming that “Sahekibe no Komaro” is the same as “Saheki no Muraji no Komaro”.  There is also a relative, possibly his son, Takunaha, who was one of the Yamato court's overseas envoys.  Thus, one can understand that he had some importance to the Royal family, and we can probably assume that he had been involved in much more.  The Crown Prince, we are told, lamented him on account of his loyal service from the very beginning. One of the confusing things in this part of the Chronicle is the term “Crown Prince”.  It doesn't help that the Chroniclers were pulling from different records, and sometimes using anachronistic titles for individuals.  Naka no Oe had been known as the Crown Prince since the time of Takara Hime, whether he actually was or not.  Now he was in charge of the government, but it isn't clear that he had been formally invested as tennou.  More than that, there is mention of an investiture in either 667 or 668, several years after his quote-unquote “reign” had begun.  This makes some sense.  After all, when Takara Hime passed away, there was a foreign war to prosecute, and that probably took a fair bit of resources.  Plus, Naka no Oe had been running things for a while before that, or so we are told.  It would make sense if things just kept on going as they had been, and they held the actual investiture when they got around to it. We also know that he was busy with building projects: not just for the defense of the archipelago, but even a new capital and a new palace.  We'll talk about it a bit more, later, but suffice it to say that he may have been taking his time and gathering everything together. All of this makes the Chronicles themselves somewhat confusing.  They throw around the terms “Crown Prince” and “Sovereign”—well, “Sumera no Mikoto”—almost interchangeably.  Meanwhile, they've also stated that the Crown Prince was Prince Ohoama, Naka no Oe's younger brother. Based on my read of things, I believe we can distinguish between the two by whether or not it specifically calls them out as just “Crown Prince”, or “Crown Prince, younger brother to the sovereign”.  The latter is clearly Prince Ohoama, and the first is most likely Naka no Oe.  After all, in this instance, why would Prince Ohoama be the one so struck by the death of Saheki no Muraji?  Based on the story the Chronicles have told us, wouldn't it make more sense that it was Naka no Oe lamenting the death of one who had helped put him on the throne, rather than sending his brother? So keep that in mind as we go through the narrative.  I'll try to point out whom I believe they are speaking about, at least until we reach the point where Naka no Oe actually is invested. Getting back to the Chronicles, in the 7th month of the year 666, some four months after the illness and death of Saheki no Komaro no Muraji, another disaster struck—this time a natural disaster.  Great floods were reported—how widespread we aren't told.  This is often a problem in a land with many mountains that often gets large rains.  It is especially problematic when much of your agriculture is based on being just at or below the level of the rivers and streams so that it can be flooded on purpose.  We are told that the government remitted the land-taxes and commuted taxes that year, likely as a form of disaster relief to those affected by the flooding. In 666, we are also told a story that actually links this reign to the previous.  We are told that a monk, named Chiyu, gave the sovereign something called a south-pointing chariot.  I'll talk about what this was in another episode.  What's important here is to note that there was a previous entry in the era attributed to Saimei Tennou, aka Takara Hime, where a monk named Chiyu, or something similar, using different characters, also created a south-pointing chariot.  Likewise, we are later told in this reign how Naka no Oe installed a clepsydra, a water clock.  This is also mentioned in the previous reign.  It is possible that these reference completely different accounts.  Or they could be connected in some way. The south-pointing chariot is probably not something that we'll have evidence of, as it would have been mobile and probably deteriorated over time.  However, the water clock would have been a fixed installation with some clear architectural remnants, and indeed we think we know where at least one was built in Asuka.  Both of the water clock entries say that it was the “first” time, so make of that what you will. Also in 666, we see that some 2000 people of Baekje were settled in the East, possibly meaning the Kanto region, though this could be anywhere between modern Nagoya out to the far eastern edge of Honshu.  They were maintained at the government expense for three years, after which they were expected to have built new lives for themselves. In later periods, there is much to be said about “Men of the East”.  There are those that point to this region as being the origin point of many of the warrior traditions that would arise and become the military samurai.  Some of the weapons and fighting styles, especially some of the horse-riding archery seems to point to continental influences that made their way to the Kanto region and beyond.  One has to consider just how much did they bring with them and how did it grow, often beyond the view of the court and the court chronicles.  For now, though, it seems to have largely been a form of a refugee program, since the Baekje no longer had a kingdom to return to. Finally, we have an omen.  In the winter of 666, the rats of the capital, in Asuka, headed north to Afumi.  As with previous entries about rats departing a capital for a direction, this is again meant as an omen.  It probably didn't happen.  But it does foreshadow an account in the following year, when, on the 19th day of the 3rd month, the capital, surprise-surprise, moved to Afumi. And perhaps I shouldn't be flippant.  It was a surprise to have the capital move to Afumi.  There are accounts of legendary sovereigns that had their palace outside of the Nara Basin or Kawachi area, but at this point Yamato had been really building up those areas.  So why would they suddenly relocate to Afumi, of all places? Well, probably because of the same thing that had been driving the rest of their large-scale building projects during this period—from the Water Castle protecting the Dazai to the various Baekje style fortresses from Tsushima down to the Nara Basin.  Afumi was a naturally defensive position.  And in such an uncertain time, having a well-defended capital must have seen like a very good idea.  In fact, though they didn't formally change the capital until the 3rd month of 667, they probably had started work on it as soon as they got back from the loss at Hakusukinoe. As far as locations go, it wasn't necessarily a bad choice.  There were still routes to the port at Naniwa, which could still house various delegations when they arrived.  There were also routes to the east, leading to Owari and the rest of central and eastern Honshu, as well as mountain passes to get to the Japan Sea.  The area where the new palace was located was in the district of Ohotsu.  Ohotsu means something like “Big Port” and I don't know if it was already a major port along the banks of Lake Biwa or if that was a name that came from having the capital there.  Ohotsu was a long-inhabited area, even well before the 660's, and an important site for trade.  In the southern end of modern Ohotsu city is Ishiyama-dera, the stone mountain temple, it which was built in the 8th century, but in front of the temple are the remains of the largest freshwater shellmound in Asia.  As you may recall from some of our earliest episodes talking about the prehistoric period in the Japanese archipelago, shell mounds are typically evidence of ancient settlements, remnants of dump sites where they could throw their detritus.  This probably included a lot more than just shells, but shells, bones, and sometimes things like pottery sherds, would remain.  And while much of the wood and waste of the period would have disintegrated over time, shells do not.    These shell mounds accordingly provide important insight into the lives of people back in that day, and the size can also help us understand things about how large a settlement might have been or how long it was there.  The sheer size of the shellmound at Ishiyama-dera likely indicates that the region had been settled for many centuries prior to the 600's. In addition to the shellmound, and more closely related to the current times we are discussing, is evidence of a rock quarry found at the temple site and showing evidence of techniques familiar to people of the 6th to 8th centuries. You see, Ishiyama is a source of a particular white stone called wollastonite.  The quarry sits below the main hall of the temple, and so it probably would not have been quarried after the hall was built, which was in the 700s, so the site is believed to have been active before that.  From the composition of the stone and the markings on the remnants, we can see similarities to stones in the base of one of the buildings at Kawaradera, in Asuka, which we've talked about before and which was one of the pre-eminent temples of its day.  So this demonstrates a link between the region and the court even before the construction of the new Ohotsu palace. Speaking of the palace, we've known of its exact position since 1974,  when archeologists found evidence of the foundation of a large complex in a residential district in Nishikori.  While some initially suggested it was an old temple, further evidence makes it pretty clear that it was the dairi, or inner sanctum, of a palace.  This is very much in the same mould as the Toyosaki Palace in Naniwa and the various palaces in Asuka from around the same period.  In front of the dairi would have been the actual government buildings, but that area has not been excavated. That brings up another question: was this a full-on capital city, Ohotsu-kyo, or just a palace, the Ohotsu-no-miya?  So far we have only found the palace, But since the area is fairly built up, it may take time to find more, assuming it hasn't been destroyed by previous urban development in the area.  There are some hints that there was more: while there were already at a couple of temples that had been built by the mid-7th century, we see several temples built in ways that not only borrow features from important Asuka temples, like the layout of Kawaradera, but they also match the alignment of the Otsu palace ruins, hinting that they were built at the same time.  For example, there is are the ruins of an abandoned temple in Shiga-Minami – actually once thought to have been the Otsu palace. There was also Soufukuji, a temple in the mountains nearby meant to protect the Northwest from malign influences, likely based on continental geomantic concepts, part of what we might today think of as Feng Shui. This same kind of protective temple building is what we see in later capital cities. Of course, we know that this would not be a permanent capital for the nation of Yamato or of Japan—we aren't that far off from the Nara period, and then, a century later, the capital at Heian-kyo.  But that couldn't have been known at the time.  There was no way to know how long tensions with the continent would last, and it was just as possible that people at the time expected this to be a permanent move.  Its preeminence lasted, too: we do have evidence that even centuries later, the region was still known as an ancient “capital”. No matter what Naka no Oe's intentions were in moving the capital to Afumi, however, it didn't exactly go over well.  It was apparently quite unpopular—so unpopular that the move was mocked in song of the time.  That said, Naka no Oe's mind was made up, and the move took place regardless.     Before moving the capital, however, there was still business to attend to.  Takara Hime and Princess Hashibito were reinterred together in the Misasagi on Wochi Hill.  We are told that men of Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla all mourned along the processional route.  The Crown Prince—I'm assuming Naka no Oe, this time given his connection to both of these women—apparently had started the work on a stone sarcophagus.  By this was probably meant the actual stone vault of the tomb, rather than just the coffin, which was also likely made of stone.  This was in Kuramaki, in Takatori, in the Takaichi District of the Nara Basin. Three months after the move to the new capital, the district of Kadono, in the west of modern Kyoto, presented to the sovereign a white swallow—an omen of some sort. The following month, on the 11th day of the 7th month, Tamna sent another embassy, led by a Minister known as Cheonma, with presents for Yamato.  This may have been the first envoy to actually visit the new Ohotsu capital, but certainly not the last. Cheonma stuck around for a few months.  In the intercalary 11th month, which is to say the extra 11th month of 667, inserted to keep the lunar and solar calendars at least partially aligned, Cheonma and his companions were presented with brocade and other cloth, as well as axes, sickles, and swords, presumably to take home to Tamna. While Cheonma was at the court, there was apparently another bit of diplomatic ping-pong going on.  Liu Jenyuan, the Tang general in charge of Baekje, sent Szema Facong and others to escort Sakahibe no Iwashiki and those with him to the Dazai in Tsukushi.  They didn't stay long, though—we are told they arrived on the 9th day of the 11th month and left only 4 days later, on the 13th day of the same.  When they left, however, they, themselves, were given escorts of Yuki no Muraji no Hakatoko—the same one whose memoirs we relied on for that previous trip to the Tang court—as well as Kaso no Omi no Moroshi.  So I guess they were escorting the escorts?  At what point does it end?  Hakatoko and others made it back about three months later, on the 23rd day of the first month of 668, and reported on their own escort mission.  That suggests that they didn't escort them that far.  They may have just seen them back to the Korean peninsula and that was it. Hakatoko's escort mission did mean that he missed a rather important event—the Crown Prince assuming the dignity.  That is to say, Naka no Oe finally took the title of sovereign.  A note in the text suggests that there were other sources that said it was the third month of the previous year—the same time that the Otsu capital was built.  Four days later they held a banquet in the palace for all of the court ministers. A little over a month later, his wife, Yamato bime, was appointed queen.  We are then told of his other wives and consorts. To be clear, Naka no Oe had been collecting consorts for ages.  So let's talk about a few of them. To start with there was Yamatobime, the Yamato Princess, daughter of none other than Naka no Oe's half-brother, Prince Furubito no Oe, his former rival to the throne. Then there was Wochi no Iratsume, aka Princess Miyatsuko, the daughter of Soga no Kurayamada no Ishikawa Maro.  She had a son, Prince Takeru, who died in 651 at the age of 8.  That suggests that she and Naka no Oe had been together since at least 643, two years before the Isshi Incident.  Another one of her daughters, Princess Uno, would go on to marry Naka no Oe's younger brother, Prince Ohoama, the new Crown Prince. Wochi no Iratsume seems to have died of grief in 649, after her father and much of her family were destroyed on the orders of her husband, Naka no Oe.  We are told that Naka no Oe also married Wochi no Iratsume's younger sister as well, Mehi no Iratsume.  She had two daughters, Princess Minabe and Princess Abe.  At this point Abe was only about 7 or 8 years old, herself, but she would eventually be married to Prince Kusakabe, the son of Prince Ohoama and Princess Uno, whom we just mentioned. Naka no Oe also had two other consorts.  Tachibana no Iratsume was the daughter of Abe no Kurahashi no Maro no Oho-omi—he was the first Sadaijin, or Minister of the Left, at the start of the Taika reforms, immediately following the Isshi Incident.  And then there was Hitachi no Iratsume, the daughter of Soga no Akaye. Soga no Akaye is an interesting figure.  You may recall the name from Episode 118.  Soga no Akaye was the acting minister in charge in Yamato when Prince Arima tried to start up a revolt against Takara Hime.  It was in his house where Prince Arima laid out his plan, but a broken armrest convinced Soga no Akaye to turn against the conspirators and turn them in.  And so it is interesting to hear that his daughter was married to Naka no Oe. We are also told of four “palace women” that Naka no Oe is said to have had children with.  The implication seems to be that these were women at the palace but they were not formally recognized with the same status as that of the formal consorts and, of course, the queen, his primary wife.  This fits in with at least one theory I've seen that Naka no Oe was something of a ladies' man.  It seems he got around even more than Murasaki Shikibu's fictional “Shining Prince”, Hikaru Genji.  We are told that there were at least 14 children among the nine official wives—and one has to consider that they were unlikely to record many of the women whom he may have slept with that he didn't also have children with.  And there is a theory that one of those not mentioned, may have been his own sister, full blooded sister.  Specifically, his sister Princess Hashibito, who was married to none other than Naka no Oe's uncle, Prince Karu, aka Jomei Tennou. To be clear:  we have no clear evidence that they were anything other than close siblings, but as you may recall how we mentioned back in Episode 114 that there was something that caused a falling out between Prince Karu and Naka no Oe, such that Naka no Oe disobeyed the sovereign's direct order in moving himself and the royal family back to Asuka.  That meant Naka no Oe, his wives, his mother, AND his sister, Princess—now Queen—Hashibito.  So, yeah, he absconded with Prince Karu's wife who was Naka no Oe's full-blooded sister.  And, as we've noted before, ancient Yamato's concept of incest was pretty narrow.  It was only if you had the same mother that you were considered full siblings—even if the father were someone else.  I suspect that this is related to the matrilineal nature of succession as well, which is why it was so important to insist that the ancient sovereigns had a direct lineal connection to the royal line through their mother as much as through their father. So if Naka no Oe and his sister were having any kind of relationship that was considered wrong or scandalous, then that could also help explain why he didn't take the throne sooner, and why it passed over to his mother.  But now, both Takara Hime and Hashibito were quite literally dead and buried, and Naka no Oe had ascended to the throne. Of the so-called “Palace Women” that  are listed as being likewise married to—or at least in a relationship with—Naka no Oe, I'd like to focus on one:  Iga no Uneme no Yakako.  For one, she is specifically mentioned as an uneme—one of the women sent to the court specifically to serve in the palace.  But her parentage isn't further illuminated other than the name “Iga” which is probably a locative, possibly referring to the area of Iga. This is also interesting because we are also told that she gave birth to a son named Prince Iga, also known as Prince Ohotomo.  Despite his mother's apparently unremarkable status, Prince Ohotomo seems to have been quite the apple of his father's eye.  He was born in 648, so in 668 he was about 20 years old, meaning that around this time he was probably just coming into his own at court.  He was married to his cousin, Princess Touchi, daughter of his uncle, Crown Prince Ohoama.  He was also married to Mimotoji, who appears to have been a daughter of Nakatomi no Kamatari, meaning that he was pretty well connected. But we'll get into that in a future episode.  For now, I think we'll leave it here: with the move of the capital to Ohotsu and the formal ascension of Naka no Oe to the throne. We'll talk about what that might mean in the future.  Until then, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

YouTuber 4amLaundry joins as we chat about retro game shopping in Tokyo! We recommend our favorite shops, games, and analyze the state of retro game hunting in Japan! And I take a look at Kairosoft's Heian City Story!Follow our guest!YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@4amLaundryTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/4amlaundry(0:00) - IntroFeature(0:55) - Retro Game Shopping in Tokyo w/ 4amLaundryGames(39:34) - Heian City StoryNews(46:14) - Switch 2 preorder updates, new game merchSocial media:Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/tokyogamelife.bsky.socialTwitter: https://twitter.com/TokyoGameLifeYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tokyogamelifeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tokyogamelife/Threads: https://www.threads.net/@tokyogamelifeWebsite: https://tokyogamelife.com/Like and subscribe on your favorite podcast app!

In the vibrant but vicious golden age of Imperial Japan, how did women use writing as a way to secure their status, and express their deepest desires? Who was Sei Shōnagon, the witty courtier whose account of life around the Japanese Empress during the iconic Heian period, provides a scintillating insight into this colourful world? And, behind the sophisticated melee of the Imperial court, with its elegance and decorum, what risks and hazards haunted every aspiring courtier…? Join Tom and Dominic for the climax to their tantalising journey into the beating heart of Imperial Japan, and the remarkable woman whose moving, keenly perceptive, but also slyly venomous, insights into this complicated arena, bring it flamboyantly to life. The Rest Is History Club: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to full series and live show tickets, ad-free listening, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members' chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestishistory.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestishistory. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episodio #272 En este episodio hablamos de los Pinan/Heian y de su bunkai.Mostramos videos de como vemos nosotros que se podría trabajar con el Bunkai de estos katas y discutimos que elementos hay que tener a la hora de incursionar en el Bunkai de estos Katas tan típicos del Karate moderno.Con la participación de José Navarro.Dirección Jorge F. Garibaldi.

This episode we kick off a series of episodes following the famous monk Xuanzang, aka the Tripitaka Master of the Law, Sanzang Fashi.  Known in Japanese as Genjo, and founder of the Faxiang school of Yogacara Buddhism, also known as the Hosso school, it was brought back to the archipelago by students who studied with the master at his temple north of the Tang capital of Chang'an.  He was particularly famous for his travels across the Silk Road to India and back--a trip that would last 16 years and result in him bringing back numerous copies of sutras from the land of the Buddha, kicking off a massive translation work.  It also would see his recollections recorded as the Record of the Western Regions, which, along with his biography based on the stories he told those working with him, give us some of the best contemporary information of the various places along the Silk Road in the 7th century. Part 1 focuses on Xuanzang's journey out of the Tang empire, braving the desert, and somehow, against the odds, making it to the country of Gaochang. For more, check out the blogpost page:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-120 Rough Transcript: Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 120:  Journey to the West, Part 1 The monks from far off Yamato were enthralled.  They had journeyed across the waves on a foreign vessel, traversed a greater distance than they probably thought possible growing up in the archipelago, and had finally arrived at the capital of the Great Tang Empire, Chang'an.  They had then been sent north, to a temple where they met others from Yamato. They had come to study the Law, the Dharma, with some of the most famous teachers of the Tang dynasty, and there were few more famous than the Tripitaka Master Genjou himself.   Everyone in the monastery knew his story—he had traveled all the way to India, the birthplace of the Buddha, and returned with copies of the sutras in Sanskrit, which he and the other monks were translating. In between sessions of meditation, sutra readings, and various lectures, the students would gather round the feet of the master as he recounted his journeys.  The stories themselves were fantastic stories, telling of far off cities and people.  There were stories of bandits, and meetings with kings.  The students must have thought about how it mirrored what they, themselves, had gone through—their own Journey to the West. Last episode we talked about Tukara and what that mysterious placename might mean—and where it could be referring to.  For that we traveled all the way to the end of the Silk Road.  In this episode and continuing into the next, we are going to travel that same road with a different perspective, as we take a look at one of the most famous travelers of the Silk Road:  the monk Xuanzang, or Genjou in Japanese.  And as I hinted at in the introduction, if you're at all familiar with the famous Journey to the West, well, this and the following episodes will explore the actual history behind that story, and how intertwined it is with the history of the archipelago. For those who don't know, Xuanzang was a monk, born Chen Hui near present-day Luoyang in Henan.  He is known by many names, but one of his most famous comes from the title “Sanzang Fashi”, aka “Tripitaka Master of the Law”, from which we get the simplified name in some English sources of just “Tripitaka”.  Sanzang, or “Tripitaka”, literally translates to “Three baskets” or “Three storehouses”, referring to the Buddhist canon.  It is quite fitting, given Xuanzang's incredibly famous Journey to the Western Regions and, eventually, to India, where he journeyed to obtain the most accurate version of the Buddhist scriptures to ensure that they had the most accurate versions.  On his journey, Xuanzang apparently took detailed records of the trip, and his   “Records of the Western Regions”  provides a lot of what we know of the towns and cultures that existed there back in the 7th century – even if not all of it was experienced firsthand and  may have come through translators and second or third-hand sources. In addition, Xuanzang's biography and travelogue add a lot more information to his journey, even if they weren't necessarily written by him, but instead by his fellow monks based on his recitations to them  combined with various records that they had access to at the time.  As such, it isn't always the most reliable, but it is still highly detailed and informative.  Xuanzang would return to China and teach for many years, translating the works that he had brought back, and founding a new school of Yogachara Buddhism, known as Faxiang in Chinese, but “Hossou” in Japan.  The Hossou school was particularly popular in the 8th and 9th centuries, having been transmitted by Yamato students who had actually studied at the feet of the venerable teacher.  These included the monk Doushou, who travelled over to the continent in 653.  In 658, there are two others who came over, named Chitatsu and Chiitsu. They had travelled to the Tang court in the 7th month of that year, where they are said to have received instruction from none other than Xuanzang himself.  If this indeed was in 658, it would have been only 6 years before Xuanzang's death. Their journey had almost not happened.  The year previous, in 657, envoys were sent to Silla to ask that state to escort Chitatsu to the Tang court, along with Hashibito no Muraji no Mimumaya and Yozami no Muraji no Wakugo, but Silla refused.  They must have relented, however, as they apparently were escorting at least the monks a year or so later. Chitatsu and Chiitsu would eventually return to Yamato, as would Doushou.  Doushou is also said to have been introduced to a student of the second patriarch of the Chan, or Zen school as well.  He would return to teach at Gango-ji, the later incarnation of Asukadera, spreading the Hossou teachings from master Xuanzang. In fact, Xuanzang's impact would be felt across Asia, and much of the Buddhist world.  He would continue to be known in Japan and in the area of China, Korea, and beyond.  Japanese translations of his journeys were made between the 8th and 10th centuries from texts that had come from Xuanzang's own monastery. Nine centuries after his death, during the Ming Dynasty, Xuanzang would be further immortalized in a wildly popular novel:  Journey to the West.  The “Journey to the West” is an incredibly fantastical retelling of Xuanzang's story.  In it, Xuanzang is sent on his task by none other than the Buddha himself, who also provides three flawed traveling companions.  There is  Zhu Bajie, aka “Piggy”—a half human half pig who is known for his gluttony and lust.  Then there is Sha Wujing, aka “Sandy”—a man with a red beard and blue skin who lived in a river of quicksand.  Despite a rather frightful backstory, he was often the straight man in the story.  And then there is the famous Sun Wukong, aka “Monkey”, the most famous of the three and often more famous than Xuanzang himself.  In fact, one of the most famous English versions of the story is just called “Monkey”, an abridged telling of the story in English by Arthur Waley in 1942. “Journey to the West” is perhaps the most popular novel in all of Asia.  It has spawned countless retellings, including numerous movies and tv series.  The character of “Monkey” has further spun off into all sorts of media.  Of course, his addition was all part of the novel, but nonetheless, that novel had an historical basis, which is where we really want to explore.  Because for all of the magic and fantasy of the Ming novel, the real story is almost as fascinating without it. We are told that Xuanzang was born as Chen Hui—or possibly Chen Yi—on the 6th of April in 602 CE in Chenliu, near present-day Luoyang.  Growing up, he was fascinated by religious books.  He joined the Jingtu monastery and at the age of thirteen he was ordained as a novice monk.  However, he lived in rather “interesting times”, and as the Sui dynasty fell, he fled the chaos to Chengdu, in Sichuan, where he was fully ordained by the age of 20. Xuanzang was inspired reading about the 4th century monk Faxian, whom we mentioned back in Episode 84.  Faxian had visited India and brought back many of the earliest scriptures to be widely translated into Chinese.    However, Xuanzang was concerned, as Faxian had been, that the knowledge of the Chinese Buddhist establishment was still incomplete.  There were still works that they knew about but didn't have, and there were competing Buddhist theories in different translations of the texts.  He thought that if he could go find untranslated versions of the texts then he could resolve some of the issues and further build out the corpus of Buddhist knowledge. Around the age 25 or 27, he began his journey.  The exact date is either 627 or 629, based on the version that one reads.  That has some importance for the events that his story tells, as some of the individuals whom he is said to have met are said to have died by 627 CE, meaning that either the dates of the journey are wrong or the dates we have in other sources are wrong.  As you can imagine, that's rather important for an accurate history, but not so much for our purposes, as I think that we can still trust the broad brush strokes which paint an image of what the Silk Road was like at the time. For context, back in Yamato, this was around the time that Kashikiya Hime—aka Suiko Tenno—passed away, and Prince Tamura was placed on the throne, passing over Prince Yamashiro no Oe, the son of the late Crown Prince, Umayado, aka Shotoku Taishi.  Whoever was on the throne, Soga no Emishi was actually running things, and the Soga family were heavily involved in the establishment of Buddhism in the archipelago.  This is relatively around the time of Episode 103. When Xuanzang took off to the West, his intentions may have been pure, but truth be told, he was breaking the law.  Tang Taizong had come to power in 626, and the routes along the Tarim Basin were under the control of the Gokturks, whom the Tang were fighting with.  As such, travel to the Western Regions was strictly controlled.  Xuanzang and several companions had all petitioned Emperor Taizong for permission to leave, but the Emperor never replied. So Xuanzang did not have permission to leave—but he decided to head out, anyway.  His companions, however, lost their nerve, and so he set out alone. Of course, he didn't simply set off for the West.  At first he went city to city, staying at local Buddhist monasteries and sharing his teachings.  To all intents and purposes, this probably seemed like normal behavior for a monk, traveling from monastery to monastery, but it was actually taking him towards the western border. And it was going well until he reached Liangzhou—known today as Wuwei.  Li Daliang, governor of Liangzhou, enforced the prohibition that "common" people were not permitted to go to the regions of the western tribes.  Word had spread about Xuanzang, and when the governor caught wind of what was going on, he called Xuanzang into an audience to find out what he was planning to do.  Xuanzang was honest and told him he was going to the West to search for the Dharma, but the governor ordered him to return to Chang'an instead. Fortunately, there was a Buddhist teacher, Huiwei, who heard about all of this this and decided to help Xuanzang.  He had two of his own disciples escort Xuanzang to the west.  Since the governor had told him not to go, this was illegal, and so they traveled by night and hid during the day until they reached Guazhou. In Guazhou, the governor, Dugu Da, was quite pleased to meet with Xuanzang, and either hadn't heard about the order for him to return to Chang'an or didn't care.  From there, Xuanzang's path was largely obstructed by the deep and fast-flowing Hulu river.  They would have to travel to its upper reaches, where they could go through Yumenguan--Yumen Pass--which was the only safe way to cross, making it a key to the Western regions. Beyond Yumenguan there were five watchtowers, roughly 30 miles apart.  These watchtowers likely had means to signal back and forth, thus keeping an eye on the people coming and going from Yumen Pass.  Beyond that was the desert of Yiwu, also known as Hami. Xuanzang was not only worried about what this meant, his horse died, leaving him on foot.  He contemplated this in silence for a month.  Before he continued, though, a warrant arrived for his arrest.  They inquired with a local prefect, who happened to be a pious Buddhist.  He showed it to Xuanzang, and then ended up tearing up the document, and urged Xuanzang to leave as quickly as possible. Yumenguan lies roughly 80-90 kilometers—roughly 50 miles or so—from the town of Dunhuang, the last major outpost before leaving for the Western Regions.  Dunhuang had a thriving Buddhist community, and the paintings in the Mogao caves are absolutely stunning, even today—one of the most well-preserved of such collections, spanning the 4th to the 14th century.  However, at this point, Xuanzang was a wanted man, and stopping in at Dunhuang might very well have curtailed his journey before it had even begun.  Instead, he would likely need to find a way to sneak across the border without alerting anyone and then, somehow, sneak past five watchtowers, each 30 miles or so apart, with no water except what he could carry or steal at each point. At this point, one of Xuanzang's escorts had traveled on to Dunhuang, and only one remained, but Xuanzang wasn't sure his remaining companion was up to the strain of the journey, and he dismissed him, deciding to travel on alone.  He bought a horse, and he fortunately found a guide--a "Hu" person named "Shi Pantuo".  "Hu" is a generic term often translated simply as "foreigner" or "barbarian" from the western lands, and the name "Shi" referred to Sogdians from Tashkent.  The Sogdians were a people of Persian descent living in central Eurasia, between the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers.  That latter was also known as the Oxus river, hence another name for the region: Transoxiana.  Sogdiana appears as early as the 6th century BCE as a member of the Achaemenid Empire, and the region was annexed by Alexander the Great in 328 BCE.  It continued to change hands under a succession of empires. The Sogdian city-states themselves were centered around the city of Samarkand, and while they did not build an empire themselves, the Sogdians nonetheless had a huge impact on cultures in both the east and the west.  Sogdians became famous as traders along the silk roads, and they built tight knit communities in multiple cities along the route.  Families kept in touch over long distances, setting up vast trading networks.  In fact, there were even Sogdian communities living in Chang'an and elsewhere in the Tang Empire.  The Sogdian An Lushan would eventually rise through the ranks of the Tang dynasty court—but that was almost a century after Xuanzang's travels. There are many material items that the Sogdians helped move across the silk road, but perhaps one of the most striking things were a style of patterned textiles.  Sassanid Persia was known for its silk textiles, often woven in images surrounded by a border of pearl-shapes:  Small circles in a circular pattern around a central figure, often duplicated due to the way the fabrics were woven.  This pearl-roundel pattern was especially taken up by the Sogdians, and their fashion sense made it popular across Eurasia.  Large pearl roundel designs were used on caftans, popular throughout the Gokturk qaghanate, and the Tang court would eventually pick up the fashion of these foreigners—generally classified as “hu” by those in Chang'an.  With a round neck, closing at the side, this western-style caftan-like garment eventually found its way into Japan as the people of the Japanese archipelago adopted Tang dynasty clothing and fashion.  In fact, Japan boasts one of the most impressive collections of silk road artifacts at the Shosoin repository of Todaiji temple in Nara, and it includes clothing and fabric that show the influence of Sogdian and Turkic merchants.  The Shosoin collection contains multiple examples of those pearl roundel patterns, for example, and you can even buy reproductions of the design today in Nara and elsewhere.  The garments themselves would continue to influence the fashion of the court, indeed giving rise to some of the most popular court garments of the Nara period, and the design continued to evolve through the Heian period until it was almost unrecognizable from its origins. Sogdians were so influential that their language—an Eastern Iranian language known simply as “Sogdian”—was the lingua franca, or the common tongue, through most of the Silk Road.  If you knew Sogdian, you could probably find a way to communicate with most of the people along way.  Today, Sogdian is extinct, with the possible exception of a single language that evolved from a Sogdian dialect. Sogdians are often known in Sinitic sources by their names—by the time of the Tang dynasty, it was common practice to give foreigners, whose names didn't always translate well into Chinese dialects, a family name based on their origin.  For the Sogdians, who were quite well known and numerous, they weren't just classified with a single name, but rather they were divided up by seven names based on where they were from.  So the name “Shi”, for instance, indicated that someone was from the area of Tashkent, while the name “An” referred to a Sogdian who was descended from people from the Bukhara, and so on.  This was a practice that went at least as far back as the Han dynasty. So, returning to the story, Xuanzang's new Sogdian guide's name is given as “Shi Pantuo”.  The name "Pantuo", which would have likely been pronounced more like "b'uan d'a" at the time, is likely a version of the name "Vandak", which was indeed a very common Sogdian name meaning something like “servant” and was often used to indicate things like religious devotion, which could be related to his status as a devout Buddhist, though it also might just be coincidental.  Xuanzang was so happy with his guide's offer to help, that he bought him clothes and a horse for his troubles. And so they headed out towards Yumenguan, the Jade Pass or Jade Gate, so called because of the caravans of jade that would head out from the Middle Country ever since the Han dynasty.  In fact, the Jade Gate was originally established as part of the western end of the Han dynasty “Great Wall”.  This was not necessarily the famous Ming Dynasty wall that most people are familiar with, but the Han Dynasty wall would have been impressively high enough, with regular patrols and beacon towers.  So if you tried going over the wall, someone was likely to see you and give chase.  There is also the issue that if you had any amount of supplies you have to bring those as well—this isn't just hopping a fence.  The wall was augmented by natural features—mountains and deep and fast-flowing rivers, for example, which made walls unnecessary.  And then there was also the fact that in many places, it was just open wilderness, which was its own kind of barrier.  Trying to go off the beaten path meant wandering through uncharted territory, which someone like Xuanzang was probably not prepared to do.  It isn't like he had GPS and Google Maps to help him find his way, and if you got lost in the desert, then who knows what might happen to you. By the way, this was true even in relatively settled places, like the Japanese archipelago, up until modern times.  While there were some areas where it was relatively flat, and you could navigate by certain landmarks, if you left the roads and trails you might easily find yourself lost without access to food or shelter.  Maps were not exactly accurate.  The safest way to travel was to stick to the more well-traveled routes. Unfortunately, that meant going through the Yumen Gate itself.  There was a garrison where the road left the territory of the Tang Empire , and that garrison would be responsible for checking the papers of anyone coming into or leaving the empire.  Xuanzang, of course, didn't have the proper papers, since he didn't have permission to be there.  Fortunately, he had a guide, who seemed to know the area, and that would allow him to bypass the official checkpoint, which Xuanzang recalls seeing off in the distance.  Together, Xuanzang and Vandak snuck past the Yumen gate, and traveled several miles up the river.  There, they found a spot where the river was only about 10 feet across, near a grove of trees, and so they chopped down a few of them and made an impromptu bridge for them and their horses to cross. From that point on, until they reached Yiwu, they would have to get past the watchtowers.  Not only were these watchtowers garrisoned with men of the Tang army, but they were also the only place to get fresh water.  The travelers would need to sneak in at night to steal water from the watchtowers without getting caught. The farther they traveled, the more Vandak seemed to be getting cold feet.  Normally, this wouldn't have been an issue had they been normal travelers, but in trying to avoid the watchtowers they were making themselves into fugitives.  If they were caught they could both be killed.  He protested several times that they should just go back, and at one point Xuanzang seemed worried that Vandak was contemplating how much easier this would be for him if he just killed the old monk.  Finally, Xuanzang told Vandak that he should leave, and solemnly swore that if he was caught he wouldn't rat out Vandak for his help.  Vandak, who had been worried about just such a scenario, nonetheless took Xuanzang's word and the two parted ways. From that point on, Xuanzang recounted that the trail through the desert was marked by nothing but skeletons and horse droppings.  He thought at one point he saw an army in the desert, but it turned out to be a mirage.  Finally, he saw one of the watchtowers he had been warned about.  Not wanting to get caught, he lay down in a ditch and hid there until the sun went down. Under cover of darkness, he approached the tower, where he saw water.  He went to have a drink, and maybe wash his hands, but as he was getting out his water bag to refill it and arrow whizzed through the air and he almost took an arrow to the knee.  Knowing the jig was up, he shouted out: "I'm a monk from the capital!  Don't shoot!" He led his horse to the tower, where they opened the door and saw he really was a monk.  They woke up the captain, who had a lamp lit so he could see whom it was they had apprehended.  Right away it was clear that this traveler wasn't from around those parts—not that anyone really was, it seems. The Captain had heard of Xuanzang, but the report that had been sent said Xuanzang had gone back to Chang'an.  Xuanzang, for his part, showed a copy of the petition he had sent to the Emperor--one that he hadn't actually heard back from.  He then told the captain what he planned to do.  The captain was moved, and decided to look the other way.  He gave him a place to stay for the night and then showed him the way to the fourth watchtower, where the captain's brother was in charge, and would give him shelter. Sure enough, Xuanzang made it to the fourth watchtower, but he wasn't sure if he could entirely trust the captain, so again he tried to just secretly steal the water, but again he was caught.  Fortunately, the captain there was also sympathetic.  He let Xuanzang stay and then actually told him how to get around the fifth watchtower, since the captain there might not be as lenient.  He also told Xuanzang about an inconspicuous oasis where he could get water for himself and his horse. Reinvigorated, Xuanzang had another challenge to face.  Beyond the watchtowers was a long stretch of desert.  It was a journey of several hundred miles, and it started poorly.  First off, he missed the oasis that the captain of the fourth watchtower had indicated he could use without anyone firing arrows at him.  Then, he dropped his water bag, such that he was left with nothing.  He thought of turning back, but he continued, chanting mantras to himself.   He was dehydrated and exhausted, but he continued onward.  Some days into his journey, his horse suddenly changed course of its own accord.  Despite his efforts, it kept going, eventually coming to a pasture of grass around a pond of clean, sweet water.  That ended up saving him, and he rested there for a day, before traveling on.  Two days later, he arrived at Yiwu, aka Hami.  He had made it.  He was free. Or at least, he was until he returned to the Tang empire.  After all, Xuanzang did plan to come back, and when he did, he would have to face the music.  That was a problem for future Xuanzang.  Of course, he was also a lone traveler.  He might be free, but he was far from safe.  He was now entering the Western regions, and he would need to be on the lookout. The people of Hami, also known as Yiwu, were known to the Han dynasty as members of the Xiao Yuezhi—the kingdom or coalition that once controlled much of the northern edge of the Tarim basin.  They had been displaced by the Xiongnu, and the area would go back and forth between different hegemons, so that by the time of the Sui and early Tang dynasties they were under the sway of the Gokturks.  Still, as close as it was to the Tang borders, they no doubt had contact, and indeed, Xuanzang was given lodging at a monastery with three other monks who were “Chinese”, for whatever that meant at the time. If you've heard of Hami today you may know it for something that it was famous for even back in the 7th century:  their famous melons.  You can sometimes find Hami melons in stores to this day. Regarding the melons and other such fruits and vegetables—the area of Hami is a fairly arid land.  Hami does get some water from the Tianshan mountains, but in order to have enough for agriculture they instituted a system that is still found today in Hami, Turpan, and other parts of the world, including arid parts of northwest India and Pakistan through the middle east to north Africa.  It is called a Karez, or in Persian it is called a Qanat, and it is thought to have originated in ancient Persia around the first millennium BCE and spread out through the various trade routes. The idea is to basically create underground aqueducts to take water from one place to another.  This would keep them out of the heat and dry air above ground to allow them to continue to flow without losing too much to evaporation.  To do that, however, required manually digging tunnels for the water.  This would be done by sinking wells at regular intervals and connecting the wells to each other with tunnels.  But it wasn't enough for the tunnels to be connected, they had to also slope slightly downwards, but not too much.  You want enough flow to keep the water clear, but if it flows too quickly or creates waves, the water might erode the underground channels in ways that could cause problems, such as a collapse.  All in all, they are pretty amazing feats of engineering and they can carry water a great distance.  Many are under 5 km, but some are around 70 km long. These karez would have been the lifelines of many towns, creating a reliable oasis in the desert.  Rivers were great, but the flow could vary from floods to a mere trickle, and the karez system provided relatively constant flow.  This allowed for agriculture even in the dry areas of the Western Regions, which helped facilitate the various kingdoms that grew up in this otherwise inhospitable region. While eating his melons in Hami and chatting it up with his fellow eastern priests, Yiwu was visited by an envoy from the neighboring kingdom of Gaochang.  Now Hami, or Yiwu, sits at the eastern edge of the Turpan-Hami basin, aka the Turfan depression, a large desert, much of which is actually so low that it is below sea level.  In fact, the basin includes the lowest exposed point in the area of modern China at Ayding Lake, which is 158 meters below sea level.  From Yiwu to Gaochang, you would follow the edge of the mountains west, to an area near a small break in the mountain range.  Follow that break northwest, and you would find yourself at the city of Urumqi, the current capital of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in modern China. Xinjiang covers much of the area known in ancient times as the “Western Regions” that remains within the modern political boundaries of the PRC. The envoy from Gaochang heard about Xuanzang, and reported back to his lord, King Qu Wentai, who immediately sent a retinue out to escort the Buddhist monk across the desert to his city.  They included multiple horses for Xuanzang, so he could change at regular intervals.  His own horse was left behind, to be brought along later.   After six days on the road, they came to the city of Paili, and since the sun had already set, Xuanzang asked to stop for the night, but the escorts urged him on to the Royal City, which was not much farther on. And so he arrived around midnight, which means he likely couldn't immediately take in the size of the city.  Gaochang was an immense walled city, and even today, ruined as it is, the site of it is quite formidable, and it is so well preserved it is considered a UNESCO world heritage site.  Perhaps since wood was relatively scarce, this is why so much of the construction was made of brick and earthworks.  Fortunately, this means that many of the walls remain, even today—eroded and crumbling, but still towering over those who come to see them.  In places they have also been rebuilt or reinforced.  And in a few, very rare instances, you can still see some of the traces of paint that would have once been so prevalent throughout a city like this.  At this time in history, Gaochang, also known as Karakhoja, was under the command of the Qu family.  The population was largely Han Chinese, and it had often been overseen or at least influenced by kingdoms in the Yellow River basin.  But it was also the home of Turks, Sogdian merchants, local Turfanians, and more.  It was even called “Chinatown” by the Sogdians, and yet attempts to further sinicize the region had provoked a coup only a couple of decades earlier.  Even though he showed up in the middle of the night, Xuanzang is said to have been welcomed by the ruler of Gaochang, Qu Wentai, as he entered the city.  Perhaps this is why the escorts had been pushing so hard—the King himself was awake and waiting for Xuanzang to make an appearance.  The King and his attendants came out with candles in their hands, and they were ushered behind curtains in a multi-storey pavilion.  The king apparently grilled him through the night, asking about his journey until it was almost daybreak, at which point Xuanzang requested rest.  He was finally shown to a bedroom that had been prepared for him and allowed to sleep. The next day king assembled the leading monks of his kingdom before his guest.  These included the monks Tuan Fashi and Wang Fashi.  Tuan Fashi had studied in Chang'an for many years, and he knew his Buddhist scholarship. And Wang Fashi was a superintendent, and it was his duty to look after Xuanzang and butter him up with the hope that he might stay and provide the king with the prestige of having such an esteemed monk.  They put him up at a monastery next to the royal palace—the “daochang”, aka “dojo” in Japanese, which would be a whole different diversion. Ding Wang suggested that this might be the same as the Chongfu Monastery mentioned in a colophon on a 7th century copy of the Sutra of Perfection of Wisdom for Benevolent Kings. It was found by a German expedition at a site in the Turfan basin in the early 20th century, and now sits in the possession of Shitenno-ji, in Osaka—rather appropriate given that Shitenno-ji was around at the same time all of this was happening.  The colophon is attributed to a “Xuanjue”, and a “Xuanjue” from Gaochang, in the Turpan basin, was associated with helping Xuanzang in his later years.  Perhaps this Xuanjue first met Xuanzang during this first trip to Gaochang. Qu Wentai tried his best to dissuade Xuanzang from continuing on.  This may be simple platitudes from his biographers, but it also may have been genuine.  Having a learned foreign monk from the Tang dynasty staying at the palace monastery would likely have added to Qu Wentai's prestige by association, and it would have potentially brought more individuals to the city of Gaochang. Speaking of which, all of this first part of the journey—up to Gaochang—comes primarily from Xuanzang's biography by the monk Huili.  Xuanzang's own “Records of the Western Regions” didn't include much on it, probably because by the time that he returned to the Tang empire, Tang Taizong had annexed Yiwu and Gaochang, so all those were now considered part of the empire, rather than foreign regions to the West. After staying a month at Gaochang, Xuanzang decided it was time to continue his journey.  Disappointed though Qu Wentai may have been that his guest would be leaving, he nonetheless outfitted him handsomely.  He provided goods, including coins, as well as 24 letters to the 24 countries that he would pass along the road, adding a roll of silk to each as a sign that they came from the King of Gaochang.  He also gave him food, a small retinue, and horses to help carry everything.  Letters of introduction would have been important across the Silk Road.  There was, after all, no way to contact someone ahead of time, unless you sent runners. Merchant communities, in particular, would often be connected across long distances through regular caravans, which carried letters to their relatives, facilitating communication across vast distances.  Merchants who were bringing in a caravan of goods would know that there was a friendly community waiting to help them when they arrived, and would likely even have an idea of what was happening and what to bring. For someone traveling alone, however, having a letter of introduction would have been important, as they didn't necessarily have access to those communities by themselves.  The letters would provide introduction and let people know who you were and may even ask for assistance on your behalf.  It may seem a small thing, but it was the kind of gesture that was likely a great help to a traveler like Xuanzang.  Remember, he was not on an official mission from the Tang court—almost expressly the opposite, as he had not been given permission to leave.  So he wouldn't have had anything identifying him, and after Gaochang he likely couldn't count on being able to communicate with his native tongue. And so he was sent on his way.  As he left the city of Gaochang, the king and others accompanied Xuanzang about 10 li, or about 3 or 4 miles, outside of the city.  As they watched him head off, who could have known if he would complete his quest?  Or would he just end up another ghost in the desert? Next episode, we'll pick up Xuanzang's story as he strikes out for Agni and beyond.  Until then thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

Paul Martin is a Japanese sword expert who has worked at the British Museum and traveled extensively in Japan to study swords and armor. Martin's new book Japanese Swords and Armor covers 30 famous samurai warriors and their swords, armor, and other artifacts associated with them, from antique sets to modern treasures, each with its own historical and cultural significance. The book was originally published in both Italian and French, and will now be available in English from by Tuttle Publishing in Oct. 2024.He discusses the history and significance of Emperor Go-Toba, who was exiled to the Oki Islands but continued making swords there. The swords he made were marked with a chrysanthemum, which became the basis for the current Imperial seal.In this podcast episode, Paul Martin highlights some of the most notable pieces in his book, including a wooden sword made by Miyamoto Musashi and sword fittings attributed to him. Martin provided recommendations on the best places in Japan to see historical Japanese swords.Empeor Go-Toba was known for his poetry, much of it written while in exile on Oki Island. One particular poem involves the poet banishing the frogs from a nearby pond:"Frogs, croaking in the pond,Go away, banish your noise;In this world of sorrow,There is no need for your song." (translation generated from ChatGPT)This poem highlights Go-Toba's despair and the heavy burden of his exile. The imagery of banishing the frogs from the pond serves as a metaphor for his own banishment and desire for peace amidst his suffering.Paul also talks about the beginning lines of the Tale of the Heike, an epic that recounts the history of the late Heian period, including the life and exile of Go-Toba“The sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a night in spring; the mighty fall at last, to be no more than dust before the wind.” Helen Craig McCulloughLastly, Paul's favorite books are:1. They Came to Japan by Michael Cooper, a collection of Jesuit records from the 17th century.2. The Tale of the Heike, (version translated by Helen Craig McCullough) a classic Japanese epic poem that reflects the concept of impermanence.“The sound of the Gion Shoja temple bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall. The proud do not endure, like a passing dream on a night in spring; the mighty fall at last, to be no more than dust before the wind.” Helen Craig McCullough3. The documentary "The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On" by Kazuo Hara, which explores the ambiguities of Japanese culture and the horrors of war.Be sure to pick up his book: Japanese Swords and Armor: Masterpieces from Thirty of Japan's Most Famous Samurai Warriors (Tuttle, Oct. 2024)You can follow Paul Martin by clicking on the following links:Website: The Japanese Sword (thejapanesesword.com)YouTube: Paul Martin: The Japanese SwordFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/The.Japanese.SwordInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejapanesesword/Twitter: @thejapaneseswrd (https://x.com/thejapaneseswrd)LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejapanesesword/ The Books on Asia Podcast is sponsored by Stone Bridge Press. Check out their books on Japan at the publisher's website.Amy Chavez, podcast host, is author of Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan and The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island.Books on AsiaTwitter: @BooksOnAsiaSubscribe to the BOA podcast at https://linktr.ee/booksonasia

This is the first in a two part series on the people living to the Northeast of Yamato, in the areas of Tohoku and Hokkaido.  They are called in the Chronicles, the Emishi and the Mishihase, and these designations appear to refer to areas that include the Epi-Jomon and later Satsumon cultures as well as members of the Okhotsk Sea Culture, all archaeological designations for various people whom we know primarily through their archaeological remains.  We also discuss a bit about how all of this ties in (or doesn't) with the modern Ainu, and why we don't necessarily use that term until much later in the historical record. For more, check out our podcast blog at: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-116   Rough Transcript   Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 116: The People of the North, Part 1   A soldier stood watch on the Nutari Barrier.  It was only a few years old—built to define and defend the boundaries between the lands under Yamato rule and the untamed wilds, beyond.  Looking behind him, the soldier could see the smoke from the nearby settlement, also newly constructed, which would supply him and his fellow guards with food and clothing while they took their turn at the border. Looking outwards, the soldier wondered what life beyond the barrier was like.  He had seen people crossing through, mostly with various trade goods.  For the most part, they didn't seem all that different, but he had heard stories: stories of wild men and women who lived in caves and slept under the trees.  They were hunters who knew the woods and could easily slip through areas that didn't even have roads. As one traveled further north, things grew only more wild and untamed—or so the stories said.   Giant bears with paws as large as a human head roamed the land—he'd seen a skin once and it was massive.  The people of the north fought with them and, or so he'd heard, even kept them as pets. Further, well beyond the pale, there were people who lived on the sea.  They traveled between islands in the frozen north, and hunted the beasts of the ocean.  They were few, but they were mighty people. A chill went through the soldier's spine.  He'd only ever heard stories of most of these outsiders, and even then it was hard to tell what was truth and what was merely exaggeration.  He had never actually gone out to see it himself, though he'd met some who claimed they had. It gave him some sense of worth that he was out here, defending the settled, civilized lands of his people from the wild, ungoverned tribes beyond the border.  That said, he hoped with all his heart that things remained peaceful.  Yes, it would certainly be better that way for all involved.   We are just starting out the second reign of Takara Hime, which started in the year 655.  For her first reign, the Chroniclers would give her the title of Kougyoku Tennou, but when she retook the throne they named her Saimei.  As we talked about in the last couple of episodes, there was a lot going on at this point, not just on the archipelago, but in the rest of Asia as well.   We'll summarize that briefly just to set the stage for the beginning of Takara Hime's reign, but this episode we're going to primarily focus on the expansion of Yamato authority throughout the rest of the archipelago, or at least the rest of Honshu.  In this context, we'll be talking extensively about the people that the Chronicles call the Emishi, since this section of the Chronicles contains numerous entries that give us our clearest look, to date, at who they were, at least from a Yamato perspective.  We'll also be looking at another group in the north, known to us as the Mishihase, for whom we have even less information. As this whole episode got a bit long, we are going to be doing this in two parts.  This episode, I'd like to introduce you to some of the terms, discuss some of the problems and considerations around these topics, and touch on what we know based largely on the archaeological record.  In the second episode we'll focus on the narrative as it appears in the Nihon Shoki, which hopefully will be something that makes more sense once we have that archaeological context.  While there are certainly some things that appear to coincide between the two narratives, there are a lot of differences.  Archaeology can help us understand the material culture, and give us some insights into the lifeways of a particular group of people, but it doesn't let us know what they said, and rarely gives us information about a particular event. Before we dive into this, I think it would be useful to touch on terms that we are going to be using this episode, and next.  I mention this because while we are dealing with the past, our story of the past is very much affecting the lives of people in the present.  Most specifically, the lives of the Ainu people of Hokkaido, and how their history and experience intertwines with the concept of the “Emishi” that we see in the Chronicles.  So let's explore these terms, and see where it takes us. First, I should probably make a note about the difference between “Wa” and “Yamato”, at least as I'm using it in this episode.  When I use “Wa” I'll be referring to the ethnic group, while “Yamato” refers to the state.  For the most part, as we are focused on the historical state forming in central Honshu, we'll talk about Yamato, or the State of Yamato. That is a political entity that is majority Wa in its make-up, but that doesn't mean that there weren't Wa people outside of the Yamato state, nor that Yamato was made up of only people who identified, ethnically as Wa.  As we've seen, the Yamato state also included immigrants who identified as people of Baekje, Silla, Goguryeo, and even Emishi. Next, the Emishi.  The term “Emishi” is an exonym used by Yamato to describe those who are outside of Yamato's borders and controls, especially up in Tohoku.  By “exonym”, I mean that it's a term imposed from outside – in this case, by Yamato – on the group of people known as the Emishi, because we really don't know what they called themselves. Moreover, the term “Emishi” is complex, and doesn't necessarily describe a single, monolithic ethnic group or culture – more a group of possible ethnicities, that occupied a particular “slot” relative to Yamato cultural identity, namely that of outsiders.  The Chronicles refer to several different geographic regions as “Emishi”, situated relative to the core of the Yamato polity -- but the archeological evidence is much more nuanced.  A prime example are the studies carried out on the “Emishi” mummies of the Oshu Fujiwara, a 12th century ruling elite who lived in Hiraizumi and who were considered “Emishi” by the court in Heian-kyo—modern Kyoto.  In studying the mummies, it was determined that they were closely related to the Wa people of Japan and the Kinki region.  This finding is important and I'll come back to it in a bit, but the takeaway is that “Emishi” doesn't automatically mean physical or cultural differences like we might assume.  There were likely ethnic Wa Emishi, along with Emishi who were more closely connected with the indigenous people—descendants of the Jomon and possible ancestors to the later Ainu people. Finally, the Ainu.  It's extremely likely that some of the people that the Chroniclers called “Emishi” may have been the ancestors of the Ainu people of today.  But the correspondence is definitely not one-to-one, as some historians used to think.  And since this is a sensitive topic with ongoing patterns of inequity and silenced voices, it's important to lay some groundwork before going further. For my part, I would like to do my best to introduce the people and the history as we know it with as little bias as I can manage, but please realize that there are certainly controversies around this area and open wounds that have not yet healed. The modern Ainu are the indigenous inhabitants of Hokkaido, Sakhalin, and Kuril islands.  They also once inhabited the very northern part of Tohoku.  In their own language, Ainu Itak, these islands are part of Ainu Mosir, the Lands of the Ainu, and “Ainu” itself is simply a word for “humans” or “people”.  While there are many cultural and linguistic ties to the Japanese—they have been neighbors for centuries—they are culturally distinct, and their language, Ainu Itak, is considered a linguistic isolate, with no known relatives outside of the Ainu homelands. The relationship between the Ainu and the Wa people—the general term for ethnic Japanese—has been one of tension and conflict born of colonization.  In the 19th century in particular, the nation of Japan claimed Hokkaido and began to settle it.  The wide open spaces were great for new industries, such as cattle ranching, which could supply dairy and beef, two things that had come into vogue with other aspects of Western culture.  I won't get into the entire history of it, but the Japanese government used tactics similar to those used in the United States against indigenous populations, often forcing people to speak Japanese instead of their native language in a paternalistic attempt to quote-unquote “civilize” the Ainu people.  Only relatively recently have the Ainu been accorded some protections in Japanese law. For our part, the study of Ainu history has long been one conducted by outsiders looking in, which of course has come with all sorts of baggage.  For instance, as I alluded to above, there has long been a tendency to equate the Ainu with the Emishi, which along with everything else cast the Ainu as somewhat less culturally evolved.  Much of this study was also taking place during a time when Marxist concepts of societal evolution were in vogue.  Add to that the generally patronizing and Colonialist concepts that were rampant in Western anthropology at the time—things like the stereotype of the “noble savage” and even the concept of “primitive” societies—and there were definitely some problematic concepts that continue to echo through into modern discussions.  Another complexity in understanding Ainu culture and history has been that the Ainu people do tend to be physically distinct from many other Japanese, which has been linked to outdated ideas about physical types and ethnicity.  Many Ainu people show more tendency towards body and facial hair than mainland Japanese, with bushy beards being common among men, and blue eyes aren't uncommon – which, combined with overall light skin, led to early identification of Ainu people as being of “Caucasian stock” according to outdated racial classifications.  The theory was that they traveled from the west across Asia in the distant past and somehow settled in the islands north of Japan.  This ties into how much of the archaeological fervor of the 19th and 20th centuries in Japan was wrapped around ethno-nationalist ideals and looking to find the origins of the Japanese people, often using concepts of eugenics to seek out physical and cultural differences between the Japanese and “other” people, such as the Ainu, to help better define who are—and who are not—Japanese.  For example, remember those Oshu Fujiwara mummies and how they were from a group described by the Chronicles as “Emishi” but ended up being more physically similar to modern Wa than modern Ainu?  Some scholars took this finding to mean that all of the Emishi were Wa people, effectively denying any ancestral claims or links that Ainu people may have had to Honshu, other than those historically attested to from about the 15th century onwards.  In similar ways, for each instance of some new “finding”, there have often been those who would use it as a further reason to discriminate against the Ainu. There is a lot of important archaeological work that has been done in Tohoku and elsewhere to help shed more light on the people living in areas that the Chronicles associate with the Emishi and beyond.  But while archaeological digs in places like Honshu and Kyushu were often done with great public support, archaeological work in places like Hokkaido often involved investigating burials of potential ancestors without consent, and even today there is some contention over how various artifacts were acquired.  As with too many places in the world, the data was not always gathered under what we may consider, today, the strictest of ethical standards.  So as important as the archeological perspective is – at least we are going off of physical items that we find rather than on the narrative imposed on the region by those in Yamato – it's important to keep that context in mind. Even recent attempts to better contextualize Ainu history at places like the Upopoy National Museum in Shiraoi, while apparently doing their best to provide that context, are still hampered by the weight of previous missteps in the relationship between the Ainu and the government.  Activists have noted that even Upopoy, the first such national museum devoted to the Ainu themselves, is still built on colonialist policies and artifacts and human remains acquired without all of the necessary consent and consultation with local Ainu.  Upopoy, for its part, appears to have reached out to those willing to work with them, and for all that there may be some controversy, it certainly has a lot of information for those interested in it. So, given these caveats, what does the archeological record tell us about the wide range of people and areas called “Emishi” by the Chronicles, including both those areas closer to the Yamato heartland, and the areas we know today as Ainu Mosir? To understand the patterns of settlement and cultural trends that we see up north – in Tohoku and Hokkaido --let's go back to the end of the Jomon period and the very start of the Yayoi.  As wet rice paddy cultivation (and accompanying pottery styles and other material goods) began to make its way into the archipelago, up through about the Kinki region—the original land of Yamato, or Yamateg—it was brought by a people that seem quite strongly connected to other people in east Asia, and these people largely replaced the indigenous Jomon era populations in western Japan.  However, the new material culture traveled faster and farther than the new people themselves, and it appears that in eastern Honshu, at least, much of the new farming technology, pottery, and other lifeways of the Yayoi culture were adopted by people that appear to share a great deal in common, physically, with the previous Jomon populations, suggesting that local populations were, themselves, adopting the new technology and being absorbed into the Yayoi culture.  This expansion of Yayoi culture and rice farming initially exploded all the way up to the very northern edge of Tohoku, but over time it started to decline in the northernmost regions.  Whether due to a change in the climate or simply the fact that the colder, snowier regions in Tohoku were not as hospitable to farming, we see that rice cultivation fell into disuse, and people seem to have once again picked up the lifeways of their ancestors in the region, returning to a more hunter-gatherer style of subsistence.  Indeed, in northern Tohoku and Hokkaido we see the continued evolution of Jomon culture in a phase that is generally known as the Epi-Jomon, or, in Japanese, the Zoku-Jomon period, which generally lasted through the end of the 7th century.  This Epi-Jomon or Zoku-Jomon cultural region lay far outside the “official” Yamato borders according to the Chroniclers in an area considered to be part of “Michinoku” – literally past the end of the road – so it's understandably commonly associated with the Emishi.  But once again, it's not that simple, because we do see Yayoi and Kofun culture extending up into this region.  In fact, there are even keyhole shaped kofun up in Tohoku, the largest of these being Raijinyama kofun, thought to have been built between the late 4th and early 5th centuries.  It sits south of modern Sendai, and there are numerous other tombs there as well, suggesting it was well connected to Yamato and the kofun culture of central Honshu. Another complication is that we have regions officially designated Emishi that were much closer in – on the borders of Yamato itself.  Based on simply the written record, it would seem that “Emishi” resided as close to Yamato as the lands of Koshi and the land of Hitachi, at the very least.  The Emishi in Koshi are mentioned several times in the Chronicles, and both the Nihon Shoki and works like the Hitachi Fudoki mention Emishi or people who are at least outside of the Yamato cultural sphere.  This area bordering Yamato seems to have been the most affected by kofun and even Yamato culture, and also would have likely come into the most direct conflict with Yamato itself.  It is also the area most likely to include those who, for one reason or another, decided to yet themselves outside the growing reach of the Yamato state, a pattern that would continue for centuries to come.  On top of that, there is something else going on in northern Hokkaido, where, starting around the 5th century, we see different archeological assemblages from the south, indicating further cultural distinctiveness from the Tohoku and southern Hokkaido inhabitants.  These are mostly found on the coast in the northern part of Hokkaido, and match closely with the culture we see first in the Sakhalin island, and later the Kurils, along the edges of the Okhotsk Sea.  Hence the name we've given to this unknown culture:  The Okhotsk Sea Culture, or just the Okhotsk culture. From what we can glean, the people of the Okhotsk culture subsisted largely off the hunting of marine mammals, such as seals, sea lions, sea cows, and whales.  In contrast, the Epi-Jomon people appear to have subsisted more on inland hunting strategies, along with coastal fishing, which is represented in their settlement patterns, among other things.  This latter description likewise tracks with descriptions of the Emishi as subsisting largely off of hunted game. It is unclear what exactly happened to the Okhotsk Sea Culture, but they appear to be one of the ancestral groups of the modern Nivkh people, on the northern part of Sakhalin and the lower Amur River and coastal regions, though the Okhotsk Sea Culture also seems to have had a large influence on the development of the people known today as the Ainu.  Modern DNA testing of Ainu demonstrate connections both with the earlier Jomon people of Japan—a connection that is much stronger than in most Japanese—but also with people from the Okhotsk Sea region.  Still, how and in what ways those people came together is not clear. The connection to the Jomon and Epi-Jomon people appears to be strengthened by the fact that throughout Tohoku there are placenames that appear to be more closely related to the Ainu language than to Japanese.  For example, in Ainu itak, terms like “nai” and “pet” refer to rivers and streams, and we find a lot of placenames ending with “nai”, “be”, or “betsu”.  These are often written with kanji that would be understandable to Japanese speakers, but the prevalence and location of these names often make people think that they are likely related to Ainu itak, in some way—possibly a proto-Ainuic language or dialect that is now lost. While I can't discount the fact that some this could be due to false etymologies, we can add to it the fact that the term “Emishi” was eventually changed to “Ezo”, which itself came to be used primarily for Hokkaido and the people there, including the people we know of today as the Ainu.  However, it isn't clear that the term Emishi, or even “Ezo”, was consistently applied to only one group, and its usage may have changed over time, simply being used in each period to refer to the people of the Tohoku and Hokkaido regions outside of the control of the Japanese court. Another aspect of the archaeological record is the change in the Epi-Jomon culture to what we know as the Satsumon culture around the time of our narrative.  Satsumon, like Jomon, is derived from the distinctive pottery styles found.  “Jomon” means “cord-marked”, referring to the use of pressed cords and similar decoration on the pottery, and starting in the 7th century we see a new style using wood to scrape designs, instead.  Thus the term “Satsumon”.  It first pops up in Honshu, but by the 9th century it had spread to Hokkaido and eventually even spread to areas associated with the Okhotsk Sea Culture.  It would last until roughly the 13th century, when it was replaced by a culture that is more clearly related to the modern Ainu people. But the Satsumon culture wasn't just new types of pottery.  We see more ironwork appearing in the Satsumon culture, as well as the cultivation of millet and other types of agriculture.  Tohoku and Hokkaido were still a bit cold for the ancient forms of wet rice agriculture that were prevalent in more southern regions, and millet and other crops likely fit more easily into the lifeways of the people in these areas. Likewise, by the 8th century, we also see a new type of stove appearing in Satsumon villages.  This “kamado” seems clearly related to the type of stove that came over to Honshu from the Korean peninsula around the 5th century, reaching Hokkaido by the 8th, and eventually finding purchase on Sakhalin by the 11th, demonstrating a slow yet continuous adoption. Some of these changes might be explained by greater contact with Wa people and the trade networks that extended through Honshu and over to the mainland, but there were also trade routes through Sakhalin island over to the Amur River delta and beyond that should not be overlooked, even if they weren't as prevalent in the written histories of the time. I previously mentioned that in the next episode, we'll dive into more of what the Chronicles have to say about the Emishi, but to give a preview, the Chronicles have already mentioned the Emishi several times as trading and treating with the Yamato state.  Back in the era before the Isshi Incident, Naka no Oe's coup in 645, Soga no Emishi himself had dealings with the Emishi of the land of Koshi, which we covered in episode 107.  Then, in the previous reign, Emishi had attended court, but the court had also erected barriers and barrier towns in Nutari and Ihabune in 647 and 648 to protect the border areas from purported raids by the Emishi.  Hence the episode opener, imagining what it might be like for a soldier at one of these barrier towns.  But, there is also another people that we've already talked about, mentioned in the Chronicles:  The Sushen people, also glossed as either the Mishihase or Ashihase people.  In the Nihon Shoki, they first appeared in an entry in the reign of Kimmei Tennou, when a group of them came ashore on Sado island, which we discussed back in episode 86.  In this period, however, the  appear to be referencing a people who were living in the north of Hokkaido, and who were putting pressure on the people to their south, much as Yamato was putting pressure on the people to their northeast. The Sinitic characters, or kanji, used to name them in the Nihon Shoki uses a term from mainland writings for the Sushen people.  This name is first given to people mentioned in early Warring States documents, such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas, as living on the Shandong peninsula.  Eventually, however, as empires expanded, the term was used to refer to people along the Amur river region and the coast, in modern China and Russia—the eastern areas of what we know as “Manchuria”.  These were probably not the same people originally referred to as living in Shandong, and instead seems to apply to the Yilou people, and likely also is cognate with the later term “Jurchen”. In the ancient Sinic documents, the Sushen are described as hunter-gatherers who live in the open, using caves and other such natural features for temporary shelter.  They hunted with bows and arrows, which were tipped with stone arrowheads.  To the settled cultures of the Yellow River basin, they were considered a primitive and barbaric people. As for the people mentioned in the Nihon Shoki, it is quite likely that the term “Sushen” was used differently.  Rather than referring to Jurchen people, or someone from mainland northeast Asia, it is thought that the characters were used because of the similar role played by the people of northern Hokkaido and Sakhalin island—and possibly because of connection with the Amur river region, including the area referred to in older documents as “Su-shen”.  Still, the people referred to in the Nihon Shoki were probably what we know as the Okhotsk Sea culture, especially based on what we know from later descriptions.  From Yamato's point of view, they were likewise living in the extreme northeast and they were a hunter-gatherer society that used stone arrowheads in their hunting.  The fact that it is glossed as either Mishihase or Ashihase by later commentators suggests that this was the name by which the Yamato knew these people, and the kanji were just borrowed for their meaning of a people in the northeast. And so in the 7th century we have both the Emishi and the Mishihase, at least in the northeast.  There are also the Hayato, another group of people in the southern reaches of Tsukushi.  We are told that they and the Emishi both attended the court in 655 in great numbers.   Discussion of who the Hayato were is probably best left for another episode.  Suffice it to say that they appear to be culturally distinct from the groups in the northeast, at least at this point. And that's where we are going to pause things for now.  The archaeological record gives us some idea of the people inhabiting the areas of Tohoku and up to Hokkaido, but it only tells part of the story—and it is a story that we are continuing to uncover.  Even today people are working on archaeological sites that just may turn up new information that will change how we see things. Next episode, we'll dive into the narrative of the Nihon Shoki and take a look at the actions of individuals—especially the actions of Abe no Hirafu, a key player in what was to happen in the north. Until then thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

Bien que le kimono soit aujourd'hui considéré comme un symbole emblématique de la culture japonaise, ses origines sont en réalité enracinées dans l'histoire de la Chine ancienne. L'évolution du kimono tel que nous le connaissons s'est fortement inspirée des vêtements chinois, en particulier de la période de la dynastie Tang (618-907). À cette époque, les échanges culturels et commerciaux entre la Chine et le Japon étaient florissants, et la mode chinoise exerçait une influence profonde sur les tenues vestimentaires japonaises. Au cœur de cette influence se trouve un vêtement traditionnel chinois appelé hanfu, qui se caractérise par ses longues manches amples et ses robes fluides avec un col croisé. Le hanfu a été largement adopté et adapté par la cour impériale japonaise, surtout au cours de l'époque de Heian (794-1185), une période de grande fascination pour la culture chinoise. C'est alors que le Japon a commencé à modifier ces vêtements importés pour les adapter à son propre climat, à sa culture et à ses valeurs esthétiques. Au fil du temps, ce qui était initialement un style importé a évolué pour devenir le kimono japonais distinct. Les ajustements incluaient la simplification de la structure vestimentaire, l'accent sur des motifs brodés spécifiques qui correspondaient à la saison ou à la classe sociale, ainsi qu'une coupe plus droite qui permettait de superposer plusieurs couches de tissu. De plus, la manière de porter ces vêtements a aussi été modifiée pour s'harmoniser avec les sensibilités japonaises, et des accessoires comme l'obi (ceinture) ont été introduits pour parfaire le style. Le kimono est donc un excellent exemple de la manière dont les influences étrangères peuvent être réinterprétées et transformées dans le contexte local pour devenir quelque chose de nouveau et de unique. Bien que les origines du vêtement soient indéniablement liées à la Chine, le Japon a développé une esthétique et une identité culturelle propres autour du kimono. Ce processus de transformation souligne l'importance des échanges interculturels dans l'histoire de l'Asie de l'Est et montre comment un symbole national peut émerger d'une base étrangère pour devenir une part essentielle de l'identité d'un pays. Ainsi, même si le kimono tel qu'il existe aujourd'hui est profondément japonais, il porte en lui une histoire de migration culturelle et d'assimilation, rendant hommage à ses racines chinoises tout en incarnant l'esprit japonais. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Send us a textThe key considerations for staying healthy, happy, and enjoying the second half of life can be related to various age-old Japanese philosophical concepts of well-being. For example, Ikigai, a popular concept talked about and used widely today, is not new. It has existed in Japanese culture, along with the other concepts, as far back as the Heian period, 794-1185.    Okinawa, Japan, a renowned "blue zone,” region whose inhabitants live to a happy, healthy, vibrant old age regularly follow and practice these beliefs in their daily lives.  Renée visited the area in the 1980s while living in Japan and observed and learned many of these simple well-being exercises and spiritual beliefs from the people there, enough for her to create a well-being roadmap on how to use them to enhance health, happiness, and longevity. She noticed that not just in Okinawa, but throughout Japan, these philosophical concepts for well-being were actively embraced by the older population.  When Renée returned home, she incorporated her roadmap, based on these well-being concepts, into her counseling practice to guide her clients through the stresses related to aging and retirement.  In this episode, you will discover: the five most prominent Japanese philosophical practices for helping to enrich health, happiness and success in the second half of life.  simple steps to create an ongoing practice to include each of these powerful, ancient Japanese concepts in your daily activities.About Renée Rosenberg:Renée Lee Rosenberg, MA, Positivity Pro, is a  Career Management Counselor, Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Emotional Intelligence Coach and Intergenerational Communication Speaker who works with organizations and individuals to foster engagement, multi-generational understanding, well-being, and career happiness at work.  An eighteen-year member of NSA-US, Renée presents virtually and in-person, and has been interviewed in media, print, and online (ABC Eyewitness News, MSNBC, Italian TV, and Forbes.com, to name a few).Renée lived in Japan in the 1980s where she studied Japanese metal making, worked for fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto and met David Bowie. While there she learned valuable Japanese insights and perspectives for sustaining happiness and well-being, which she incorporates in her national and international presentations as well as in her virtual and in person career counseling practice.  Her book, Achieving the Good Life After 50, has helped many overcome the stresses of aging and approaching retirement.  Clients describe Renée , a native New Yorker, as passionate, authentic, inspiring, and funny.Get in touch with Renée Rosenberg:Download Resources Discussed:  https://revolutionizeretirement.com/rosenbergresources Visit Renée's website: https://positivitypro.com/ What to do next: Click to grab our free guide, 10 Key Issues to Consider as You Explore Your Retirement Transition Please leave a review at Apple Podcasts. Join our Revolutionize Your Retirement group on Facebook.

Esta noche estrenamos relato de vampiros inspirado en la mitología Yokai de Kimetsu No Yaiba , una historia de Ignacio Pillonetto en homenaje al universo de Demon Slayer: "La flor Vampiro". Esta es una historia de orígenes, un relato antiquísimo, imposible de datar, pero cuyo desenlace, tiene lugar en el último período de la época clásica de la historia de Japón, la era Heian. En los años comprendidos entre el 794 y el 1185; un período especialmente notable por ser significativo para el desarrollo de la mitología de los Yokai; espíritus vengativos y diversos monstruos de pesadilla. No se pierdan el ensayo completo publicado por Héroes de Papel en el que podrán encontrar las referencias mitológicas y el folclore japonés de los Cazadores de Demonios... Entre cuyas historias hemos rescatado esta Flor Vampiro... https://www.heroesdepapel.es/productos/de-cazadores-y-demonios-314 Sigan a Ignacio Pillonetto en su instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reymonoz/ Escucha el episodio completo en la app de iVoox, o descubre todo el catálogo de iVoox Originals

Ito-koku and Na-koku were the next two countries on the path of the Wei envoys noted in the Gishiwajinden.  They likely refer to the areas known today as Itoshima and Fukuoka, so what do we know about these places in the Yayoi period, and how is it that by the 3rd century Yamato seemed to have taken the foremost position on the archipelago and not one of these other countries, where wet paddy rice agriculture and other continental technologies first arrived in the archipelago. For more see our podcast blog post at: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/itoandna Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Gishiwajinden Part Five: Ito-koku and Na-koku This episode we are finishing up our Gishiwajinden Tour, focusing on our journey to Ito-koku and Na-koku, or modern day Itoshima and Fukuoka. We'll talk about what we know from the records of these two areas in the Yayoi and early Kofun periods, and then look at some of the later history, with the development of the Dazaifu, the build up of Hakata and Fukuoka, and more.  A key thread through all of this will be our discussion about why it was Yamato, and not these early states, who eventually became paramount.  If this is where things like wet paddy rice agriculture started, and they had such close ties to the continent, including sending a mission to the Han dynasty, why did the political center shift over to Yamato, instead?  It is certainly something to wonder about, and without anything written down by the elites of Na and Ito we can only really guess based on what we see in the histories and the archaeological record. We ended our tour in Na for a reason: while the Gishiwajinden—the Japanese section of the Wei Chronicles—describes the trip from the continent all the way to Yamatai, the locations beyond Na are largely conjecture.  Did ancient travelers continue from Na along the Japan Sea coast up to Izumo and then travel down somewhere between Izumo and Tsuruga to the Nara Basin?  Or did they travel the Inland Sea Route, with its calmer waters but greater susceptibility to pirates that could hide amongst the various islands and coves?  Or was Yamatai on the island of Kyushu, and perhaps the name just happens to sound similar to the Yamato of Nara?  Unfortunately, the Wei Chronicles have more than a few problems with accuracy, including problems with directions, meaning that at most we have some confidence in the locations out to “Na”, but beyond that it gets more complicated.  And even “Na” has some questions, but we'll get to that later. Unlike the other points on our journey, we didn't stay overnight at “Ito-koku”, , and we only briefly stayed at Na—modern Fukuoka, but I'll still try to give an account of what was going on in both places, and drawing on some past visits to the area to fill in the gaps for you.   Both the Na and Ito sites are believed to be in the modern Fukuoka prefecture, in Itoshima and Fukuoka cities.  Fukuoka prefecture itself actually spans all the way up to the Shimonoseki straits and includes the old territory of Tsukushi—Chikuzen and Chikugo—as well as the westernmost part of Buzen, the “closer” part of the old land of “Toyo” on the Seto Inland Sea side of Kyushu.  When it comes to locating the country of Ito-koku, we have lots of clues from current place names.  The modern Itoshima peninsula, which, in old records, was known as the country of Ito, and was later divided into the districts of Ito and Shima.  Shima district, at the end of the peninsula, may have once been an island—or nearly so.  It is thought that there was a waterway between the two areas, stretching from Funakoshi bay in the south to Imazu Bay, in the north, in Fukuoka proper.  Over time this area was filled in with deposits from the local rivers, making it perfect for the Yayoi style wet rice paddy agriculture that was the hallmark of the growth in that period.  And indeed there are certainly plenty of Yayoi and Kofun era ruins in the area, especially in eastern reaches of the modern city of Itoshima, which reside in the valley that backs up to Mt. Raizan.  There you can find the Ito-koku History Museum, which tells much of the story of Ito. The Weizhi, or the Wei Chronicles, note that Ito-koku had roughly a thousand households, with various officials under their own Queen, making it one of the few Wa countries that the Chroniclers specifically noted as being a “kingdom”, though still under the nominal hegemony of the queen of Yamatai or Yamateg.  If you continue eastward along the coast from Itoshima, you next hit Nishi-ku, the Western Ward, of modern Fukuoka city, which now continues to sprawl around Hakata Bay.  Nishi-ku itself used to also be known as “Ito”, though spelled slightly differently, and you can still find Ito Shrine in the area. So was this part of Ito-koku also? It's very possible.   Na-koku, or the country of Na, was probably on the eastern edge of modern Fukuoka, perhaps around the area known as Hakata down to modern Kasuga.  Much like in Karatsu, this area features some of the earliest rice fields ever found in Japan – in this case, in the Itazuke neighborhood, just south of Fukuoka airport.  The land here is mostly flat, alluvial plains, formed by the rivers that empty out into Hakata Bay, another great area for early rice agriculture. Locating the country of Na is interesting for several reasons.  For one, unlike all of the other Wei Chronicles sites we've mentioned, there is no clear surviving placename that obviously matches up between “Na” and the local area.  It is a short enough name that it may simply be difficult to distinguish which “Na” is meant, though there is a “Naka” district in Kasuga that may show some promise.  There certainly is evidence for a sizeable settlement, but that's much more tenuous than the placenames for other areas, which remained largely in use in some form up to the modern day, it would seem. The name “Na” shows up in more than just the Weizhi, and it is also mentiond in the Houhan-shu, or the Record of the Later Han, a work compiled later than the Weizhi, but using older records from the Late Han dynasty period.  There it is asserted that the country of Na was one of the 99 some-odd countries of Wa, and they sent an embassy to the Later Han court, where they received a gold seal made out to the “King of Na of Wa”.  We talked about this in Episode 10: The Islands of the Immortals: That seal, made of gold, was seemingly found in the Edo period—1784, to be precise.  A farmer claimed to have found it on Shika island, in Hakata Bay, which is quite prominent, and connected to the mainland with a periodically-submerged causeway.  The description of the find—in a box made up of stones, with a large stone on top that required at least two men to move it—seems like it could have been an old burial of some kind.  The island certainly makes sense as an elite burial site, overlooking Hakata Bay, which was likely an important feature of the lifeways of the community.  While there have been questions about the authenticity of the seal, if it is a forgery, it is quite well done.  It looks similar to other Han era seals, and we don't really have a way to date the gold it is made of.  Without the actual context we can't be quite sure. This certainly seems like pretty strong evidence of the country of Na in this area, somewhere – probably not on the island itself, then close by.So unless something else comes along, I think we can say that this is at least the vicinity of the old country of Na.  Okay, so now that we've talked in general about where these two places were, let's go back and look at them in more detail. The Ito-koku site is just up the coast from where we stayed for Matsuro-koku, in Karatsu, which all makes sense from the position of the Chronicles in that it says the early envoys traveled overland from one place to the other.  Of course it also says they traveled southeast, which is not correct as the route is actually northeast.  However, they had traveled southeast from the Korean peninsula to Tsushima and then Iki and Matsuro, so that direction was well established, and this is an easy enough error that could have been made by the actual envoys or by later scribes, as it would be a one character difference. For Ito-koku, as with Matsuro-koku, we have no large, reconstructed sites similar to Harunotsuji on Iki or Yoshinogari, further inland in Saga prefecture, where we have an entire, large, so-called “kingly” settlement.  There is evidence of settlements, though, both near the major burial sites as well as around the peninsula.  And as for those burial sites, well, Ito has a few, and they aren't merely important because of their size.  Size is often an indication of the amount of labor that a leader must have been able to mobilize, and so it can be used to get a general sense of the power that a given leader or system was able to wield, as they could presumably turn that labor to other users as well. However, it is also important to look at other factors, like burial goods. What kind of elite material was the community giving up and placing with the deceased? That is the case with the first site we'll discuss, the Hirabaru burial mound.  At first glance it isn't much—a relatively unassuming square mound, about 12 by 14 meters, and less than 2 meters in height.  It was discovered in 1965 by a farmer who started digging a trench to plant an orchard and started pulling up broken pieces of a bronze mirror, one of the first clues that this was someone important.  They later found various post holes around the site, suggesting that it was more than just an earthen mound, and as they excavated the site they found pottery, beads, mirrors, and more. Let's start with those post-holes.  It looks like there was at least one large pillar set up due east of the burial.  We don't know how tall it was, but it was likely of some height given the size of the pillar hole—I've seen some estimates that it could have been up to 70 meters tall.  A tall pole would have provided visibility, and it may also be significant that it was east, in the direction of the rising sun.  We know that the ancient Wa had a particular connection with the sun, and this may be further evidence of that.  There are other holes that may be a gate, and possible a storehouse nearby, presumably for various ritual items, etc.  Suddenly, even without knowing exactly what was there, we start to see a picture of a large, manmade complex that seems to be centered on this burial and whomever is there. On top of that, there was a mirror in the tomb that was larger than any other ever found in Japan at that time—certainly the largest round mirror of that period.  It is not one of the triangular rimmed mirrors that Yamato is known for, but may have been part of another large cache brought over from the mainland.  About 40 mirrors in total, many of them very large, were found buried in the tomb, some of which appear to have been broken for some reason.  Furthermore, the large mirrors appear to fit within the dimensions given the Great Mirror—the Yata no kagami—housed at the sacred Ise Shrine.  There is a document in 804, the “Koutai Jingu Gishiki Chou”, detailing the rituals of Ise shrine, which describes the sacred mirror sitting in a box with an inner diameter of 1 shaku, 6 sun, and 3 bu, or approximately 49.4 centimeters, at least using modern conversions.  The same measurements are given in the 10th century Engi Shiki.  So we can assume that the mirror in Ise, which nobody is allowed to actually see, let alone measure, is smaller than that, but not by much, as the box would have been made to fit the mirror, specifically.  It isn't like you can just grab a box from Mirror Depot.  The mirrors found at Hirabaru Mound measure 46.5 centimeters, and have a floral pattern with an eight petaled flower on the back.  Could this mirror be from the same mold or the same cache, at least, as the sacred mirror at Ise?  At the very least, they would seem to be of comparable value.   In addition, there were many beads, jars, etc.  Noticeably absent from the burial were swords and weapons.  Based on this, some have argued that this was the burial of a queen of Ito-koku.  There is evidence that this may be the case, but I don't think the presence of weapons, or the lack thereof, is necessarily a good indicator. After all, we see in the old stories that women were also found wielding swords and leading troops into battle. So it's dangerous to make assumptions about gender based on this aspect alone. I wonder if the Hirabaru tomb assemblage might have more to do with something else we see in Yamato and which was likely applicable elsewhere in the archipelago: a system of co-rulership, where one role might have to do more with administrative and/or ritual practice, regardless of gender. This burial assemblage or mirrors and other non-weapons might reflect this kind of position. The Weizhi often mentions “secondary” or “assistant” positions, which may have truly been subordinate to a primary ruler, or could have just been misunderstood by the Wei envoys, who saw everything through their particular cultural stratification.  In a similar fashion, early European explorers would often name people “king”—from the daimyo of Sengoku era Japan to Wahunsenacawh, known popularly as “Powhatan” for the name of his people, on what would become known as North America.  That isn't to say that these weren't powerful individuals, but the term “king” comes with a lot of Eurocentric assumptions and ideas about power, stratification, etc.  Is there any reason to believe that the Wei envoys and later chroniclers were necessarily better at describing other cultures? And of course we don't have any physical remains of the actual individual buried there, either. However, there is a good reason to suggest that this may have been a female ruler, and that *is* because of something in the Weizhi, which specifically says that the people of Ito lived under the rule of a female king, aka a queen, using a description not unlike what is used for Queen Himiko.  In fact, Ito gets some special treatment in the record, even though it isn't the largest of the countries.  Let's look at those numbers first: Tsushima is said to have 1,000 households, while Iki is more like 3,000.  Matsuro is then counted at 4,000 families, but Ito is only said to have 1,000, similar to Tsushima.  Just over the mountains and along the Bay, the country of Na is then counted at a whopping 20,000 households, so 20 times as many.  These numbers are probably not entirely accurate, but do give an impression of scale, at least. But what distinguishes Ito-koku in this is that we are told that it had a special place for envoys from the Korean peninsula to rest when they came.  It makes you wonder about this little place called Ito. Hirabaru is not the only kingly tomb in the area.  Walk about 20 to 30 minutes further into the valley, and you might just find a couple of other burials—in particular Mikumo-Minami Shouji, discovered in 1822, and Iwara-Yarimizo, which includes artifacts discovered in the 1780s in the area between Mikumo and Iwara as they were digging a trench.  Based on evidence and descriptions, we know that they pulled out more bronze mirrors and other elite goods indicative of the late Yayoi paramounts. In these areas they have also found a number of post holes suggesting other buildings—enough to perhaps have a relatively large settlement. As noted earlier, we do not have a reconstructed village like in Harunotsuji or Yoshinogari, given that these are private fields, so the shape of the ancient landscape isn't as immediately impressive to people looking at the area, today.  The apparent dwellings are largely found in the triangle created between two rivers, which would have been the water source for local rice paddies.  The tombs and burials are found mostly on the outskirts, with the exception of the kingly burial of Mikumo-Minami Shouji.  This is also interesting when you consider that the later Hirabaru mound was situated some distance away, raising a bunch of questions that we frankly do not have answers for. The area of these ruins is not small.  It covers roughly 40.5 hectares, one of the largest Yayoi settlements so far discovered.  Of course, traces of other large settlements—like something in the Fukuoka area or back in Yamato—may have been destroyed by later construction, particularly in heavily developed areas.  This is interesting, though, when you consider that the Weizhi only claimed some 1,000 households. There are also other graves, such as various dolmens, across Ito and Shima, similar to those found on the peninsula, and plenty of other burials across both ancient districts.  And as the Yayoi culture shifted, influence of Yamato can be seen.  While Ito-koku clearly had their own burial practices, which were similar to, but not exactly like, those in the rest of the archipelago, we can see them start to adopt the keyhole style tomb mounds popular in Yamato. During the kofun period, the area of Itoshima built at least 60 identified keyhole shaped tombs, with a remarkable number of them from the early kofun period.  Among these is Ikisan-Choushizuka Kofun, a large, round keyhole tomb mound with a vertical stone pit burial, estimated to have been built in the latter half of the 4th century.  At 103 meters in length, it is the largest round keyhole tomb on the Genkai coast—that is to say the northwest coast of Kyushu. All of these very Yamato-style tombs would appear to indicate a particular connection between Ito and  Yamato—though what, exactly, that looked like is still up for debate.  According to the various early Chronicles, of course, this would be explained because, from an early period, Yamato is said to have expanded their state to Kyushu and then even on to the Korean peninsula.  In particular, the Chronicles talk about “Tsukushi”, which is both used as shorthand for the entirety of Kyushu, while also indicating the area largely encompassing modern Fukuoka prefecture.  On the other hand, this may have been a sign of Ito demonstrating its own independence and its own prestige by emulating Yamato and showing that they, too, could build these large keyhole tombs.  After all, the round keyhole shape is generally thought to have been reserved, in Yamato, for members of the royal family, and Ito-koku may have been using it similarly for their own royal leaders.  It may even be something in between—Ito-koku may have recognized Yamato's influence and leadership, but more in the breach than in actuality.  Afterall, until the standup of things like the various Miyake and the Dazai, we aren't aware of a direct outpost of the Yamato government on Kyushu.  The Miyake, you may recall, were the ”royal granaries”, which were basically administrative regions overseeing rice land that was directly controlled by Yamato, while the Dazai was the Yamato government outpost in Kyushu for handling continental affairs.  On top of a lack of local control in the early Kofun, the Weizhi appears to suggest that the Yamato paramount, Himiko, was the “Queen of the Wa” only through the consensus of other polities, but clearly there were other countries in the archipelago that did not subscribe to her blog, as it were, as they were in open conflict with Yamato.  This all leads into something we've talked about in the main podcast at various times, but it still bears discussing:  How did Yamato, over in the Nara Basin, become the center of political life in the Japanese archipelago, and why not somewhere in Kyushu, like ancient Na or Ito?  While we don't entirely know, it is worth examining what we do and some of the factors that may have been in play.  After all, Kyushu was the closest point of the main Japanese islands to the mainland, and we see that the Yayoi culture gets its start there.  From there, Yayoi culture spread to the east, and if we were to apply similar assumptions as we do on the spread of the keyhole shaped kofun, we would assume that the culture-givers in the west would have held some level of prestige as groups came to them to learn about this new technology, so why wasn't the capital somewhere in Kyushu?  We likewise see other such things—Yayoi pottery styles, fired in kilns, rather than open fired pottery; or even bronze items brought over from the continent.  In almost every instance, we see it first in Kyushu, and then it diffuses eastward up to the edge of Tohoku.  This pattern seems to hold early on, and it makes sense, as most of this was coming over from the continent. Let's not forget, though, that the Yayoi period wasn't simply a century: by our most conservative estimates it was approximately 600 years—for reference, that would be roughly equivalent to the period from the Mongol invasions up to the end of the Edo period, and twice as long as the period from Mimaki Iribiko to the Naka-no-Oe in 645, assuming that Mimaki Iribiko was ruling in the 3rd century.  So think about all that has happened in that time period, mostly focused on a single polity, and then double it.  More recent data suggests that the Yayoi period may have been more like an 1100 to 1300 year range, from the earliest start of rice cultivation.  That's a long time, and enough time for things in the archipelago to settle and for new patterns of influence to form.  And while Kyushu may have been the first region to acquire the new rice growing technology, it was other areas around the archipelago that would begin to truly capitalize on it. We are told that by the time the Wei envoys arrived that the state of Yamato, which we have no reason not to believe was in the Nara Basin, with a focus on the area of modern Sakurai, had approximately 70,000 households.  That is huge.  It was larger than Na, Ito, and Matsuro, combined, and only rivaled in the Weizhi by Touma-koku, which likely referred to either the area of Izumo, on the Japan Sea coast, or to the area of Kibi, along the Seto Inland Sea, both of which we know were also large polities with significant impact in the chronicles.  And here there is something to consider about the Yayoi style agriculture—the land determined the ultimate yield.  Areas with more hills and mountains are not as suited to wet rice paddy agriculture.  Meanwhile, a flat basin, like that in Yamato, which also has numerous rivers and streams draining from the surrounding mountains into the basin and then out again, provided the possibility for a tremendous population, though no doubt it took time to build. During that time, we definitely see evidence of the power and influence of places like Na and Ito.  Na sent an embassy to the Han court—an incredible journey, and an indication of not only their interest in the Han court and continental trade, but also their ability to gather the resources necessary for such a journey, which likely required some amount of assistance from other, nearby polities.  Na must have had some sway back then, we would assume. Meanwhile, the burial at Ito shows that they were also quite wealthy, with clear ties to the continent given their access to large bronze mirrors.  In the absence of other data, the number and size of bronze mirrors, or similar bronze items, likely only useful for ritual purposes, indicates wealth and status, and they had some of the largest mirrors as well as the largest collection found for that period.  Even into the stories in the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki we see how mirrors, swords, and jewels all are used a symbols of kingship.  Elite status was apparently tied to material items, specifically to elite trade goods.  Assuming Yamato was able to grow its population as much as is indicated in the Weizhi, then by the 3rd century, they likely had the resources to really impress other groups.  Besides things like mirrors, we can probably assume that acquisition of other goods was likewise important.  Both Ito and Yamato show evidence of pottery shards from across the archipelago, indicating extensive trade networks.  But without any other differentiating factors, it is likely that Yamato, by the 3rd century, at least, was a real powerhouse.  They had a greater production capacity than the other states listed in the Weizhi, going just off of the recorded human capital. And this may answer a question that has been nagging me for some time, and perhaps others:  Why did other states acquiesce to Yamato rule?  And the answer I keep coming back to is that it was probably a combination of wealth, power, prestige, ritual, and time. For one thing, wealth: Yamato had it.  That meant they could also give it.  So, if Yamato was your friend, you got the goods, and you had access to what you need.  You supported them, they could help you with what you needed.  These transactional alliances are not at all uncommon, and something I think most of us can understand. There is also power—specifically military power.  With so many people, Yamato would likely have been a formidable threat should they decide that violence was the answer.  That said, while we read of military campaigns, and no doubt they did go out and fight and raid with the best of them, it's expensive to do so.  Especially exerting control over areas too far out would have been problematic, especially before writing AND horses.  That would be costly, and a drain on Yamato's coffers.  So while I do suspect that various military expeditions took place, it seems unlikely that Yamato merely bested everyone in combat.  Military success only takes you so far without constant maintenance. And so here is where I think prestige and ritual come into play.  We've talked about how Yamato did not exactly “rule” the archipelago—their direct influence was likely confined to the Kinki region for the longest period of time.  And yet we see that they influenced people out on the fringes of the Wa cultural sphere: when they started building large, keyhole shaped kofun for their leaders, and burying elites only one to a giant mound, the other areas of Japan appear to have joined in.  Perhaps Yamato was not the first to build a kofun for a single person, but they certainly were known for the particular shape that was then copied by so many others.  But why? We don't know for certain, but remember that in Yamato—and likely the rest of the Wa cultural sphere—a large part of governance was focused on ritual.  The natural and what we would consider the supernatural—the visible and invisible—worked hand in hand.  To have a good harvest, it required that workers plant, water, harvest, etc. in the right seasons and in the right way.  Likewise, it was considered equally important to have someone to intercede with the kami—to ensure that the rains come at the right time, but not too much, and a host of other natural disasters that could affect the crop. And if you want to evaluate how well ritual works, well, look at them.   Are you going to trust the rituals of someone whose crops always fail and who barely has a single bronze mirror?  Or are you going to trust the rituals of someone with a thriving population, multiple mirrors, and more?  Today, we might refer to this as something like the prosperity gospel, where wealth, good health, and fortune are all seen as stemming from how well one practices their faith, and who's to say that back in the day it wasn't the same?  Humans are going to human, after all. So it makes sense that one would give some deference to a powerhouse like Yamato and even invite their ritualists to come and help teach you how it is done.  After all, the local elites were still the ones calling the shots.  Nothing had really changed. And here is where time comes in.  Because over time what started as an alliance of convenience became entrenched in tradition.  Yamato's status as primus inter pares, or first among equals, became simply one of primus.  It became part of the unspoken social contract.  Yamato couldn't push too hard on this relationship, at least not all at once, but over time they could and did demand more and more from other states. I suspect, from the way the Weizhi reads, that Yamato was in the early stages of this state development.  The Weizhi makes Queen Himiko feel like something of a consensus candidate—after much bickering, and outright fighting, she was generally accepted as the nominal paramount.  There is mention of a male ruler, previously, but we don't know if they were a ruler in Yamato, or somewhere else, nor if it was a local elite or an earlier paramount.  But not everyone in the archipelago was on board—Yamato did have rivals, somewhere to the south (or north?); the directions in the Weizhi are definitely problematic, and it may refer to someone like the Kuma or Kumaso people in southern Kyushu or else people that would become known as the Emishi further to the east of Yamato. This lasted as long as Yamato was able to continue to demonstrate why they were at the top of this structure.  Theoretically, anyone else could climb up there as well, and there are certainly a few other powerful states that we can identify, some by their mention and some by their almost lack of mention.  Izumo and Kibi come to mind almost immediately. The Weizhi makes it clear that Himiko's rule was not absolute, and part of her reaching out to the Wei in the first place may have been the first attempt at something new—external validation by the continent.  A large part of international diplomacy is as much about making people believe you have the power to do something as actually having that power.  Getting recognition from someone like the Wei court would further legitimize Yamato's place at the top of the heap, making things easier for them in the long run. Unfortunately, it seems like things did not go so smoothly, and after Himiko's death, someone else came to power, but was quickly deposed before a younger queen took over—the 13 year old Toyo.  Of course, the Wei and then the Jin had their own problems, so we don't get too many details after that, and from there we lose the thread on what was happening from a contemporary perspective.  Instead, we have to rely on the stories in the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki, which are several hundred years after the fact, and clearly designed as a legitimizing narrative, but still present us something of a picture.  We don't see many stories of local elites being overthrown, though there do seem to be a fair number of military campaigns.  Nonetheless, even if they were propped up by Yamato, local elites likely had a lot of autonomy, at least early on, even as they were coopted into the larger Yamato umbrella.  Yamato itself also saw ups and downs as it tried to figure out how to create a stable succession plan from one ruler to the next.  At some point they set up a court, where individuals from across the archipelago came and served, and they created alliances with Baekje, on the peninsula, as well as with another polity which we know of as Nimna.  Through them, Yamato continued to engage with the continent when the dynastic struggles there allowed for it.  The alliance with Baekje likely provided even more legitimacy for Yamato's position in the archipelago, as well as access to continental goods. Meanwhile the court system Yamato set up provided a means for Yamato to, itself, become a legitimizing factor. Hierarchical differences in society were already visible in the Yayoi period, so we can generally assume that the idea of social rank was not a new concept for Yamato or the other Wa polities.  This is eventually codified into the kabane system, but it is probably likely that many of the kabane came about, originally, as titles of rank used within the various polities.  Yamato's ability to claim to give—or even take away—that kabane title, would have been a new lever of power for Yamato.  Theoretically, other polities could just ignore them and keep going on with their daily lives, but if they had already bought into the social structure and worldview that Yamato was promoting, then they likely would have acquiesced, at least in part, to Yamato's control. Little by little, Yamato's influence grew, particularly on those closer to the center.  Those closer, and more affected, started to listen to Yamato's rules about kofun size and shape, while those further on the fringes started to adopt Yamato's traditions for themselves, while perhaps maintaining greater independence. An early outlier is the Dazai.  It is unclear whether this was forcibly imposed on the old region of Na and nearby Ito, or if it was more diplomatically established.  In the end, though, Yamato established an outpost in the region early on, almost before they started their practice of setting up “miyake”, the various royal granaries that appear to have also become local Yamato government offices in the various lands.  The Dazai was more than just a conduit to accept taxes in the form of rice from various locals—it was also in charge of missions to the continent.  Whether they were coming or going, military or diplomatic, the Dazai was expected to remain prepared.  The early iterations were likely in slightly different locations, and perhaps not as large, but still in roughly the area near modern Fukuoka and Dazai.  This was a perfect place not only from which to prepare to launch or receive missions from the continent, but also to defend the nearby Shimonoseki straits, which was an important entryway into the Seto Inland Sea, the most direct route to Naniwa and the Yamato court. The first iterations of direct Yamato control in Tsukushi—modern Fukuoka—claim to have been focused largely on being a last point to supply troops heading over to fight on the peninsula, not unlike the role of Nagoya castle on the Higashi-Matsuura peninsula in the 16th century.  Over time, though, it grew into much more.  The Weizhi, for its part mentions something in the land of Ito, where there were rooms set up for envoys from the continent, but the Dazai was this on steroids. Occasionally we see evidence of pushback against Yamato's expansion of powers.  Early on, some states tried to fool the envoys into thinking that they were Yamato, perhaps attempting to garner the trade goods for themselves and to take Yamato's place as the interlocutor between the Wa polities and the continent.  We also see outright rebellions—from Iwai in Kyushu, in the 6th century, but also from various Emishi leaders as well.  The Iwai rebellion may have been part of the impetus for setting up the Dazai as a way to remotely govern Tsukushi—or at least help keep people in line.  For the most part, though, as time goes by, it would seem that Yamato's authority over other polities just became tradition, and each new thing that Yamato introduced appears to have been accepted by the various other polities, over time.  This is likely a much more intricate process than even I'm describing here, but I'm not sure that it was necessarily a conscious one; as the concept of Yamato as the “paramount” state grew, others ceded it more and more power, which only fed Yamato's self-image as the paramount state.  As the elites came under the Yamato court and rank system, they were more closely tied to it, and so Yamato's increased power was, in a way, passed on to them as well.  At least to those who bought in. By the 5th century, we know that there were families sending people to the court from as far away as Hi no Kuni in Kyushu—near modern Kumamoto—and Musashi no Kuni in the east—including modern Saitama.  All of that said, while they may have subordinated themselves to Yamato in some ways, the various polities still maintained some independent actions and traditions.  For example, whatever their connection to Yamato, the tombs at Itoshima also demonstrate a close connection to the peninsula.  The horizontal entry chamber style of tomb—something we saw a lot in Iki, and which seems to have been introduced from the continent—started to become popular in the latter half of the 4th century, at least in the west of the archipelago. This is well before we see anything like it in Yamato or elsewhere, though it was eventually used across the archipelago.  Itoshima appears to have been an early adopter of this tomb style, picking it up even before the rest of the archipelago caught on, making them the OG horizontal chambers, at least in Japan. Ultimately, the image we have of Ito-koku is of an apparently small but relatively influential state with some influence on the cross-strait trade, with close ties to Yamato. The history of the region seems a bit murky past the Kofun period.  There are earthworks of an old mountain castle on Mt. Raizan that could be from the Asuka period, and in the 8th century the government built Ito castle on the slopes of Mt. Takaso, possibly to provide some protection to the Dazaifu, which was the Yamato outpost in Kyushu, and eventually became the main administrative center for the island.  It seems, then, that whatever power the country of Ito may have once had, it was subsumed by the Dazai, which was built a little inland, east of the old Na territory.  Furthermore, as ships grew more seaworthy over time, they could make the longer voyages straight to Iki or Tsushima from Hakata.  For the most part, the area of the Itoshima peninsula seems to have been merely a set of districts in the larger Tsukushi and then the Chikuzen provinces.  The area of Na, meanwhile, which is said to have had 20,000 households in the 3rd century—much larger than nearby Ito—was completely eclipsed by the Dazaifu after the Iwai rebellion.  After the fall of Baekje, the Dazaifu took on even greater administrative duties, and eventually took over all diplomatic engagement with the continent.  They even set up a facility for hosting diplomatic envoys from the continent.  This would come to be known as the Kourokan, and they actually found the ruins of it near the site where Maizuru castle was eventually built in what is now Chuo-ku, or the central ward, of Fukuoka city. From the Heian period onwards, the Harada family eventually came to have some power in the area, largely subordinate to others, but they built another castle on Mt. Takaso, using some of the old Ito Castle earthworks, and participated in the defense of the nation during the Mongol invasions. The Harada family rose briefly towards the end of the Sengoku Period, pushing out the Otomo as Hideyoshi's campaign swept into Kyushu.  They weren't quite fast enough to join Hideyoshi's side, though, and became subordinate to Kato Kiyomasa and eventually met their end during the Invasions of Korea. The Ito district at some point after that became part of the So clan's holdings, falling under Tsushima's purview, along with a scattering of districts elsewhere, all likely more about the revenue produced than local governance.  In the Edo period, there were some efforts to reclaim land in Imazu bay, further solidifying links with the Itoshima peninsula and the mainland, but that also fits in with the largely agricultural lifestyle of the people in the region.  It seems to have remained largely a rural backwater up into modern times, when the Ito and Shima districts were combined into an administrative district known as “Itoshima city”. Meanwhile, the Dazaifu continued to dominate the region of modern Fukuoka.  Early on, worried about a Silla-Tang alliance, the Yamato state built massive forts and earthworks were built around the Dazaifu to protect the region from invasion.  As the Tang dynasty gave way to the Song and Yuan dynasties, however, and the Heian court itself became more insular, the Dazaifu's role faded, somewhat.  The buildings were burned down in the 10th century, during the failed revolt of Fujiwara no Sumitomo.  The government never rebuilt, and instead the center of regional government shifted to Hakata, closer to the bay. Appointed officials to the Dazai were known as the Daini and the Shoni.  Mutou Sukeyori was appointed as Dazai Shoni, the vice minister of the Dazaifu, in the late 12th century.  Though he had supported the Taira in the Genpei wars, he was pardoned and made the guardian of Northern Kyushu, to help keep the region in check for the newly established Kamakura Bakufu.  He would effectively turn that into a hereditary position, and his family became known as the “Shoni”, with their position eventually coming to be their family name.  They would provide commendable service against the Mongol invasion, and eventually became the Shugo Daimyo over much of western Kyushu and the associated islands, though not without pushback from others in the region. Over time, the power of the Shoni waned and various other daimyo began to rise up.  The chaos of the Sengoku period saw the entire area change hands, back and forth, until Hideyoshi's invasion of Kyushu.  Hideyoshi divided up control of Kyushu, and Chikuzen, including the areas of Hakata and modern Itoshima, was given to Kobayakawa Takakage.  Hideyoshi also began to redevelop the port of Hakata.  After the battle of Sekigahara, Kobayakawa Hideaki, Takakage's adopted son and nephew to the late Hideyoshi, was transferred to the fief of Okayama, and the area of modern Fukuoka city was given to Kuroda Nagamasa, creating the Fukuoka Han, also known as the Kuroda Han. Nagamasa would go on to build Maizuru Castle on the other side of the Naka river from the port of Hakata, creating two towns with separate administration, each of which fell under the ultimate authority of the Kuroda.  Hakata, on the east side of the river, was a city of merchants while Fukuoka was the castle town, and largely the domain of samurai serving the Kuroda.  The Kuroda would remain in control of the Fukuoka domain through the Edo period, and only lost control at the very start of the Meiji, as the domain system in general was dissolved. Over that time, Hakata remained an important port city, and the samurai of Fukuoka were known for maintaining their martial traditions. In the Meiji era, samurai from the Kuroda Han joined with other Kyushu samurai, rising up during Saigo Takamori's rebellion.  Later, it would be former samurai and others from Fukuoka who would form the Gen'yosha, an early right wing, nationalist organization that would greatly influence the Japanese government heading into the latter part of the 19th and early 20th century. But that is getting well into more modern territory, and there is so much else we could discuss regarding the history of this area, and with any luck we will get to it all in time.  For now, this concludes our Gishiwajinden Tour—we traveled from Kara, to Tsushima and Iki, and then on to Matsuro, Ito, and Na.  From here the envoys traveled on to Fumi, Toma, and then Yamato.  Fumi and Toma are still elusive locations, with various theories and interpretations as to where they were.   For us, this was the end of our journey. Next episode we will be back with the Chronicles and getting into the Taika era, the era of Great Change.  There we will really see Yamato starting to flex its administrative muscles as it brings the various polities of the archipelago together into a single state, which will eventually become known as the country of Nihon, aka Japan. Until then, thank you for listening.  If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to us at our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

Moving on with our third part of the Gishiwajinden Tour, we head to the old area of Matsuro, which, for us, means modern Karatsu.  Here we have some of the oldest rice paddies in all of Japan, but Karatsu is so much more.  It was part of Matsura, where the Matsura family (aka league, factions, or pirates, depending on how you saw it) arose.  It is also a short hop from Nagoya, which briefly became the capital of Japan; Nagaoka-kyo gets a mention in the histories, but Nagoya rarely merits it, since it was just the Taiko and every actually important person minus the Tenno. For more photos and others such things, check out: https://www.sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/matsuro-koku/   Rough Transcript: Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is Gishiwajinden Tour, Part Four:  Matsuro-koku So far on this tour through the locations listed in the Weizhi's Wa Record, the Gishiwajinden, following the route to Queen Himiko of Wa, we've hit the area of Gaya, or Gara; Tsushima—or Tuma-koku; Iki, aka Iki-koku; and now we are arriving at Karatsu, thought to be the location of Maturo-koku. Now before we go any further, let's talk about the name.  After all, up to this point in the account, the names haven't been too far off.  Well, Tsushima was recorded as something like Tuma in the Chinese record, which seems reasonable, and “Iki” was actually recorded as something like “I-dai”, though we are pretty sure that was a transcription error based on other evidence. But Karatsu and Maturo, really don't seem related.  Also, didn't we earlier equate Matsuro with Matsuura, Matsura?  But if you look for Matsuura on a map it is quite some distance away from Karatsu—in fact, it is in modern Nagasaki prefecture as opposed to Karatsu, which is in modern Saga prefecture. First off, Karatsu is a later name for the city, not the area.  It literally means “Tang Port”, and that name seems to appear in the 15th century in the form of Karatsu Jinja, or Karatsu Shrine.  So no, the names Karatsu and Matsuro are not related.  Prior to being called Karatsu, though, it was part of a larger area called Matsura.  It sits at the head of the Matsura River, which spills out into what is now called Karatsu Bay.  In ancient times this seems to have been the heart of the area known as Matsura or Matsuro.  Over time it was incorporated into the larger area known as Hi no Kuni, and when Hi no Kuni was divided up by the Ritsuryo state into Hizen and Higo, we see the Matsura district, or Matsura-gun, is a part, along the coast.  The fact that it is spelled as “Matsu” and “Ura”, meaning “pine beach”, might hint at the original name of the place or could be a false etymology, imposed by the need to record the location in kanji, the Sinitic characters used at the time.  Fun fact time:  Hizen refers to the area of the land of Hi that was closer to Yamato, while Higo refers to the area of the land of Hi that was further away.  If you look at a modern map of where these two ancient provinces were, however, you'll notice that by a slight technicality, Higo is actually closer, as the crow flies.  But remember, people are not crows, at least not in this life, and in all likelihood, most of the travel to and from Yamato would have been via sea routes.  So Hizen is closer to Yamato from that perspective, as you would have to sail from Higo, around Hizen, or take the long way south around Kagoshima. But where were we? So Matsura district in Hizen started at Matsura-gawa and the area around Karatsu bay, and included modern areas of Hirado all the way out to the Goto islands.  That was a pretty large area.  It later got further subdivided into East, West, North, and South Matsura subdistricts, with Karatsu in the Eastern subdistrict, and some portion of the west.  Eventually, Karatsu city became its own administrative district, in modern Saga prefecture, and so did Hirado city, in what was the old Northern Matsura sub-district, joining Nagasaki prefecture.  The western sub-district went to Karatsu or incorporated as Imari, known for their Imari-ware pottery.  And that left a small portion of the northern sub-district. The incorporated villages and islands eventually came together as Matsuura city, in Nagasaki prefecture, which is what you'll see, today.  And that is why, looking at a modern map, “Matsura” and modern “Matsuura” are not precisely in the same place. That history also helps demonstrate the historical connections between Karatsu, Hirado, Iki, and Tsushima—as well as the Goto islands.  This region was where the Matsura clan arose, which controlled at least out to Iki, Hirado, and the Goto archipelago, and it was known for its strong navy, among other things. For our trip, heading to Karatsu was originally borne out of convenience:  Our goal was to take the ferry so that we could travel along the ocean routes.  We had traveled the route from Izuhara, on Tsushima, to Ashibe port, on Iki island.  During that trip it was interesting to watch as Tsushima disappeared and then eventually Iki appeared on the horizon, but it wasn't immediate, and I suspect you would have wanted an experienced crew who knew the route and knew what to look for.  Conversely, from Indoji port, on Iki, to Karatsu I felt like we were constantly in sight of one island or another, or at least could see the mountains of Kyushu to get our bearings.  There wasn't really a time that felt like we were that far out from land.  Even so, it would still have been a treacherous crossing back in the day. Coming in to Karatsu from the ferry, the first thing you will notice is the castle.  Karatsu castle, also known as Maizuru Castle, is a reconstructed castle, but it really does provide a clear view of what one would have seen.  The original was abandoned in the Meiji period and sold off in 1871.  The main keep was later demolished and made into a park.  In 1966 they built a new, 5-storey keep on the original base, and from 1989 onward have continued to make improvements to various parts of the castle moats and walls.  You can still see the layout of the Ninomaru and honmaru sections of the castle, encompassing the old samurai districts of the jokamachi, or castle town, of Karatsu during the Edo period. Our primary goal in Karatsu, however, was not castle focused.  We wanted to go back to an earlier time – the Yayoi period, to be precise - and Karatsu and the Matsuro-kan did not disappoint.  While not quite as extensive as the reconstruction at other Yayoi sites like Harunotsuji or Yoshinogari, the site at the Matsuro-kan is still impressive in its own right. What is the Matsuro-kan, you might ask?  It is the building and grounds of what is also known as the Nabatake site.  In 1980, construction workers were excavating for a road through the Nabatake section of Karatsu when they noticed they were pulling up artifacts.  An investigation between 1980 to 1981 determined that the artifacts were from the late Jomon to middle Yayoi period.  Further investigation discovered the presence of old rice paddies.  In 1983 the site was designated as a national historic site, further excavations were carried out, and the Matsurokan was built to house the artifacts and also provide some reconstructions of what the rice paddies would have looked like.  For context these are some of the oldest rice paddies found in Japan, along with the nearby Itazuke rice paddies, in neighboring Fukuoka prefecture, and are key for giving us insights into what we know about early rice field cultivation. Here I should point out that these fields were in use through the middle Yayoi period, while the mission to Yamato—or Yamatai—recorded in the Weizhi would have been in the late Yayoi or early Kofun period, so likely several hundred years later.  There are other Yayoi settlement remains found up and around the peninsula, and there are Kofun in the area, especially along the banks of the Matsura river.  Given how built up much of the area is, it is possible that any large scale settlement may have been destroyed by subsequent settlements, or is somewhere that there just hasn't been a good reason for a full excavation.  Still, who knows what we might eventually find.    The Matsurokan appears to stick with the dating of the Yayoi period from about 300 BCE.  This is based largely on assumptions regarding the development of different pottery styles.  Recent research has suggested that this should be pushed back to about 800 or even 1000 BCE, suggesting a more gradual development.  For our purposes, it is enough to note that this site appears to cover from the final Jomon era in Kyushu to the coming of wet rice agriculture with the advancing Yayoi culture. Based on what was found at the site, the wet rice paddies were created in what at least one scholar has suggested as a “primitive” wet rice paddy.  The paddies themselves appear to have been placed in a naturally swampy area, irrigated by a natural stream.  This would have made flooding the fields relatively simple, without the large ponds or waterworks required to cover a more extensive area.  This may have sufficed for a small village, possibly only a handful of families living together and working the land. Besides the impressions of the paddies themselves, various tools, pottery, and more were also found at the site.  Stone harvesting knives were plentiful—a semicircular stone knife that was held in the fingers of one hand, allowing a harvester to grasp the stalks and cut them quickly.  This was the standard method of harvesting prior to the arrival of the sickle, or kama, and is still in use in some parts of China and Southeast Asia.  It is more labor intensive than the sickle, but provides some benefits in the consistency and lack of waste product. The Matsurokan demonstrates how a lot of the Yayoi tools are, in fact, still in use in one form or another in different cultures that also absorbed rice cultivation, showing how widespread it became. In addition, there are artifacts such as shards of pottery showing what looks to be the imprint of a woven fabric, and various equipment for weaving and sewing.  We have some beams and posts from buildings, which give us something at least try to guess at how things were put together. There are bones of various animals as well as stone arrowheads.  There are also fish and even dugong bones, suggesting they also made a living from the nearby sea.  And there are various bits of jewelry, including magatama, and what appears to be a shark's tooth with holes drilled in so it could be worn on a cord.    There are also carbonized rice grains found at the site, likely grown there. We don't have any ancient strains of rice that can be proven to come from these fields, but in their reconstruction, outside the museum, they have rebuilt some of the rice fields and grow old rice variants in them.  This is used, in part, to teach local schoolchildren about rice cultivation – in fact, local schools are allocated individual paddies each growing season. Besides the rice paddies, the Matsurokan also boasts several reconstructed dwellings.  These are similar to ones you might find elsewhere depicting what life was like back in the Yayoi period. As the Yayoi period gave way to the kofun, we do see some mounded tombs in the area, though not quite as many as in others.  Matsura appears to be rather rural. Around the Heian period, we see the rise of a local group that comes to be known as the Matsura group, or Matsura-tou, which eventually consolidated into the Matsura family.  There are several lineages claiming that the Matsura family descended from the Minamoto or Abe clans or through branch families thereof.  Matsura-to itself is sometimes called the 48 factions of Matsura.  It wasn't as much a family as an alliance of local warriors, each with their own base of operations.  I can't quite tell if the lineage of the later Matsura clan, as they were known, were meant to represent a single lineage or the various lineages that came together.  For all we know, they may have married into official families or otherwise concocted lineages to help legitimize them as much as anything else—this far out from the center, in the 11th century, there wasn't necessarily as much oversight. Early in the 11th century they also had a chance to prove themselves with the Toi invasion – that was the Jurchen invasion we mentioned last couple episodes.  After the Toi invaders attacked Tsushima and Iki, they set their sites on Hakata Bay, which was the closest landing to the Dazaifu, the Yamato government in Kyushu.  They were chased off and headed down the coast.  Minamoto Tomo is said to have led the forces that repelled the Toi invaders, who finally departed altogether, striking one more time on Tsushima before heading back to wherever they came from. Minamoto Tomo is said, at least in some stories, to have been the founder of the Matsura clan, or at least the leader of the 48 factions, which then coalesced into the Matsura clan, which eventually would run the Hirado domain. Over two hundred and fifty years after the Toi Invasion would come the Mongols.  If the Toi were bad, the Mongols were much worse.  The Toi were a band of marauders, who caused a lot of havoc, but do not appear to have had state backing.  The Mongols were perhaps more appropriately the Yuan empire, who had already conquered the Yellow river valley and were working on the Song dynasty along the Yangzi.  While the Toi had brought with them Goryeo warriors as well—who may or may not have joined up willingly—the Mongols had huge armies from all over that they could throw at a problem. As we talked about in the past two episodes, the Mongols swept through Tsushima and Iki and then headed straight for Hakata, the closest landing zone to the Dazaifu, the government outpost in Kyushu.  Even during the height of the Kamakura shogunate, this was still an important administrative center, and would have given the Mongols a huge advantage on holding territory and eventually sweeping up the archipelago. Fortunately, they were stopped.  Whether it was the gumption, skill, and downright stubbornness of their samurai foes or the divine wind that swept up from the ocean, the Mongols were turned back, twice. During each of these invasions, the Matsura clan and others rushed to the defense of the nation, but unlike with the Toi invasions, there do not appear to have been any serious battles along the Matsuura coastline—not that I can make out, anyway. After the Mongol invasion, Kyushu was not left out of the troubles that would follow, including the downfall of the Hojo, the rise of the Ashikaga, and the eventual breakdown of the shogunal system into the period known as the Warring States period.  Through it all the Matsura continued to ply the seas and encourage the trade from which they and others, like the Sou of Tsushima, came to depend on.  They also allied with other entrepreneurial seafarers, known to others as pirates, and they started trading with a group of weird looking people with hairy beards and pale skin, who came to be known as the Nanban, the southern barbarians—known to us, primarily, as the Portuguese. One faction of the Matsura were the Hata—no relation to the Hata that set up in what would become the Kyoto region in the early periods of Yamato state formation.  The Hata ruled the area that would become Karatsu, but eventually they were taken over by the Ryuzoji, who were allied with Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi's interest in the Karatsu and Matsura area had to do with its easy access to the continent.  And so Hideyoshi began to pay attention to Nagoya, at the end of the peninsula down from Karatsu.  And no, not *that* Nagoya.  If you hear Nagoya, today, you are probably talking about the bustling metropolis in Aichi, which was where Toyotomi himself got his start, growing up and going to work for the local warlord, named Oda Nobunaga.  Due to a quirk of Japanese names and how they read particular characters, this is a different Nagoya. The Kyushu Nagoya had been one of the Matsura trading posts, run by a sub-branch of the Hata family, who had built a castle on the site.  Hideyoshi had much grander plans for the area.  In 1591 he began work on a massive castle and associated castle town.  This castle was to be his new headquarters, and he moved his entire retinue there from Osaka, with an expectation that all of the daimyo would follow him.  Sure enough, they showed up with their own vassals, setting up camps around the peninsula and in the new city-to-be. The castle was the base of operations from which Hideyoshi coordinated the invasions of Korea.  It was a massive undertaking, and extremely impressive.  The city itself sprung up, and although the wood was still new, and the buildings somewhat hastily put together, it was soon a bustling metropolis and briefly became the center of art and culture in the entire archipelago. Hideyoshi himself had a teahouse built within the confines of the castle, where he apparently spent most of his days, even when receiving reports on how things were going across the sea on the archipelago.  The city had a Noh theater, as well.  It must have been a sight to see. As for the castle itself, based on the remains, it was massive.  It appears to use the contours of the hill upon which it sits.  It seems there was a previous castle there of some kind, and it is unclear how much this was merely expanded, but Hideyoshi's new castle was truly monumental, with a labyrinth of gates to get in -- similar  to Himeji Castle, for anyone who has been there, but with a serious vertical incline as well.  Nagoya Castle was second only to Osaka castle, and yet it was erected quickly—only 8 months.  I guess that's what you can do when you can mobilize all of the daimyo across Japan.  Even today, ruined as it is, the walls tower over you, and you can spend hours wandering the grounds. For all that it was impressive, the good times at Nagoya Castle lasted only for a brief seven years—when Hideyoshi passed away, the council of regents moved back to Osaka, and Nagoya castle was deliberately destroyed, stones removed from the walls such that it could never survive a true siege. This was a sign to the Korean peninsula – the Joseon court - that, with the death of the taiko, Japan had given up any pretext of conquering the peninsula. Today, only the stones and earthworks remain of the briefly thriving city, but on the grounds is a wonderful museum that catalogs this particular slice of Medieval life.  The Nagoya Castle Museum of Saga prefecture is off the beaten path—there is no train, so you'll need to take a bus or private car to get there—but it is well worth it. The museum itself is dedicated to Japanese and Korean cross-strait relations, which feels a bit like atonement given that the castle was built with conquest in mind. Of course, the centerpiece of the Museum is the castle, but it also does a good job telling the story of relations between the peninsula and the archipelago.  It starts in the ancient times, talking about how, even during the Jomon period, there were commonalities in fishhooks and similar equipment found from Kyushu up through the Korean peninsula.  From there, of course, trade continued, as we've seen in our journey through the Chronicles.  It talks about some of the shared cultural items found from the Yayoi through the Kofun, and also demonstrates how some of the earliest Buddhist statues have clear similarities to those found in Silla.  It goes over the various missions back and forth, and even gives a map of the Toi Invasion that we talked about hitting Tsushima and Iki. The Mongol invasion is also heavily talked about, but not nearly so much as the invasion of Korea.  There is another reproduction of the letter of King Sejeong, with the faked seal from the Sou clan in Tsushima.  This of course, was the period when they built Nagoya-jo into a castle and city of at least 100,000 people, almost overnight.  Even the Nanban were there, trading in the city while supplies from across the country were gathered and shipped off to keep troops fed on the invasion of Korea. There are plenty of images from this time—from a Ming envoy to Nagoya castle to images of the invasion from the Korean perspective, with Koreanized samurai manning the walls of the castles they had taken.  They don't exactly lionize the samurai, but they don't accentuate some of the more horrific things, either, like the piles of ears taken from those killed because taking their heads, as was standard practice in older days, was too cumbersome. There is also some discussion of relations afterwards—of the Joseon embassies, though those went through Hakata, Nagoya-jo having long been abandoned at that point.  For reasons one can probably understand, it doesn't go into the post-Edo relations, as that is much more modern history. After the destruction of Nagoya castle, the area was largely abandoned, but the city of Karatsu proper really thrived during the Edo period.  Karatsu was also a castle town, as we've mentioned, but a bit out of the way.  As sailing ships were now more sturdy and able to handle longer sea crossings, it was now often Hakata, in Fukuoka, that received much of the trade, and the Dutch traders who had replaced the Portuguese, were limited to Dejima, in Nagasaki. When Hideyoshi swept through, the Hata were not exactly considered trustworthy, and were placed under the Nabeshima, a branch of their rivals, the Ryuzouji.  During the invasion of Korea, the Hata rebelled, and were destroyed for it in 1593.  Their territory was given to Terazawa Hirotaka, who had been put in charge of the construction of Nagoya castle and later put in charge of the logistics for the invasion effort from the Kyushu side.  As a result, he was granted the lands formerly controlled by the Hata, including Karatsu, and what would become the Karatsu domain. Hirotaka could see which way the wind blew—in more ways than one.  After Hideyoshi's death, he supported Tokugawa Ieyasu, allowing him to keep and even expand his fief.  He redirected the Matsura river—then known as the Hata river—to its present course, and he built a pine grove along the northern beach that is the third largest such grove in all of Japan.  Known as the “Niji no Matsubara”, or the ”Rainbow Pine Forest” for its shape, it was erected as a windbreak to protect the precious farmland just on the other side.  It is still there today, still managed, and quite famous.  You can drive through the pine trees or stop and walk through them, even out to the beach.   And there is even a fantastic burger truck that parks along the main road through the pine grove, so you can enjoy a lovely picnic among the trees. The Terazawa would not remain in place for very long.  During the Shimabara rebellion of the early 17th century—a rebellion based on either taxes or Christianity, depending on whom you ask—the Terazawa line was extinguished.  Terazawa Katataka, then ruler of the Karatsu domain, was held liable for mismanagement of the domain and loss of a castle to the rebels.  He had land confiscated and he felt publicly humiliated, and so he took his own life while he was in Edo.  As he had no heir, the Terazawa line died out. Karatsu domain went through a variety of hands after that.  Its value fluctuated, but it is generally thought that the real value of the domain, thanks to the ability to trade, was well beyond what it was assessed to produce.  As such it was a lucrative position, and also held sway as a check against Nagasaki, watching the trade there with the Dutch merchants.  Because of all of this, the lord of Karatsu was also banned from holding certain government positions, so as not to distract from their duties, making the position something of a blessing and a curse. Through the years, Karatsu thrived.  They were and are still known for a type of traditional pottery, known as Karatsumono, or Karatsuware, and they maintain elaborate festivals.  One of the festivals, the Karatsu Kunchi, is considered a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.The Karatsu Kunchi is an annual parade where neighborhood associations carry giant floats through the city from Karatsu Shrine down to the shore.  It was inspired, in the early 19th century, by the famous Gion Matsuri of Kyoto—a wealthy merchant saw that and donated the first lion-head float to Karatsu Shrine.  Later, others would create their own floats. These floats, known as “Hikiyama” or “pulled mountains” can be five or six meters high and weigh anywhere from two to five tons.  There appear to be 14 hikiyama, currently, though there used to be 15—a black lion is currently missing.  The floats have gone through a few iterations, but are largely the same, and often have some relationship to the neighborhoods sponsoring them. From Matsura, aka Matsuro-koku, we went north along the coast of Kyushu to Itoshima, thought to the be old country of Ito-koku, and beyond that, the Na-koku of Fukuoka.  We'll cover both of those in our next and final installment of our Gishiwajinden tour. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to us at our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

On your knees with the queens in the poetry darkroom,  poetic pleasures await! Then we wipe off our kneecaps before hitting the Pride Parade.If you'd like to support Breaking Form:Review the show on Apple Podcasts here.Buy our books:     Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.     James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.NOTESTess Gallagher's "Stopping Place" is from her book Willingly.Donna Stonecipher's "Inlay 18 (Sei Shõnagun)" is from her book The Cosmopolitan. Read a bit about the book here. Sei Shōnagon's actual given name is not known. It was the custom among aristocrats in those days to call a court lady by a nickname taken from a court office belonging to her father or husband. Sei Shōnagon (c. 966–1017 or 1025) was a Japanese author, poet, and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi (Sadako) around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is the author of The Pillow Book.The Dick Dock in Provincetown is so popular it has its own Facebook page. Or check out this Youtube video called "Provincetown's Dick Dock: Making Gay Sex Magic!"If you want to know more about the history of the Meat Rack on Fire Island, here's a good starting place. Read Ocean Vuong's poem "Theology"Marilyn Nelson's "For Mary, Fourth Month" is available in her The Fields of Praise: New and Selected. Jim Powell did indeed win a MacArthur in 1993. Read more poems by Powell here.Read Frank Stanford's "Blue Yodel of the Desperado"Read more about Osip MandelstamKevin Prufer's book of poems The Fears won the Rilke Prize. Read the judges' citation here. Visit Michelle Tea's website here. Or read an excerpt from her poem "I Used to Be Straight" here (scroll down).Read Franny Choi's "Unlove Poem" Read "Prayer/Oracion" by Francisco X. Alarcón, trans. Francisco Aragón Read "American Wedding" by Essex HemphillHere's June Jordan's fiery "Poem About My Rights" You can read torrin a. greathouse's "Aubade Beginning in Handcuffs" here. 

Sugawara no Takasue no musume (1008 - c. 1059), or Takasue's daughter, was the author of “Sarashina Nikki,” or “Sarashina Diary,” a well-known book providing an in-depth look at life during Japan's Heian period. While the book remains prolific and relevant even today, we don't know the author's name.  For Further Reading: Heian Period (794–1185) The Sarashina Diary: A Woman's Life in Eleventh Century Japan The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated Historically, women have been told to make themselves smaller, to diminish themselves. Some have used that idea to their advantage, disappearing into new identities. For others, a disappearance was the end to their stories, but the beginning of a new chapter in their legacies. This month we're telling the stories of these women: we're talking about disappearing acts. History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn't help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should. Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we'll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures. Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Sara Schleede, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Luci Jones and Abbey Delk. Special thanks to Shira Atkins. Original theme music composed by Miles Moran. Follow Wonder Media Network: Website Instagram Twitter See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From Renaissance Florence and ancient Babylon to the kingdom of Benin and Heian-era Kyoto, cities across history have served as launchpads for extraordinary outbursts of artistic flowering. Caroline Campbell, director of the National Gallery of Ireland and the author of The Power of Art, guides Ellie Cawthorne through some of these cultural metropolises, exploring what made them artistic hubs, and how they turbocharged the story of art. (Ad) Caroline Campbell is the author of The Power of Art: A World History in Fifteen Cities (The Bridge Street Press, 2023). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-People-Painting-Fifteen-Cities/dp/0349128480/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-histboty The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, we turn our attention to two of the defining institutions of the Heian period, both of which will be very important for us going forward. First are the shoen, or private estates, the growth of which led to the fragmentation and decentralization of the government. The second is the rising power of the warrior class--known to history as the samurai. Show notes here.

This week on the podcast, we're all about literature. We'll be exploring the varieties of poetry and prose that have made the Heian period one of the golden ages of literary flourishing in Japanese history. Show notes here.

This week, we take a step away from politics to talk about two crucial subjects. First, we have the evolution of the Japanese language and its incorporation of Chinese influence. Second, we have the evolution of Buddhism and the arrival of two important sects in the evolution of a distinctly Japanese form of the religion: Tendai and Shingon.  Show notes here. 

This week in the Revised History of Japan: in a bid to strengthen the power of the imperial family, Emperor Kanmu moves the imperial capital one more time to some newfangled place called "Heian-kyo." Plus, the political battle between the imperial family and the Fujiwara clan takes a few more twists. Show notes here.

1185 - Tension between the clans during the Heian period of Japanese history was reaching boiling point particularly after the Taira clan had expelled the Minamoto from the capital city of Heian-kyu (Kyoto). The result was the outbreak of the Genpei War, and the Battle of Dan-no-ura was the concluding episode of this war.

794 - 1180 - We are covering the period of Japan's history from the relocation of the capital city to Heian-kyō up to the outbreak of the Genpei War.