Podcasts about Iki

Saray'a operasyon Kıyım başladı; iki ismin daha suyu ısındı   Tarık Toros   Manşet   10 Temmuz 2025

Vilniuje prasideda gatvės meno festivalis „Spot“. Iki sekmadienio miesto aikštės, skverai, kiemai ir parkai taps scena tarptautiniams teatro, šokio, cirko ir performanso kūrėjams. Nacionalinėje dailės galerijoje, kur ir vyks vienas iš pasirodymų, lankosi kolegė Evelina Povilavičiūtė.Kelionių agentūra „West Express“ reklamuodama poilsines keliones į Turkiją, naujienlaiškyje panaudojo frazę: „Žmonės kalba, kad čia geriau nei Palangoje“. Šis reklaminis palyginimas atkreipė Palangos miesto savivaldybės dėmesį – kyla klausimų, ar toks komunikacijos būdas neperžengia etiškos reklamos ribų. Kada kito miesto vardas reklamoje tampa nebe kūrybiniu sprendimu, o galimu pažeidimu? Kaip tokią praktiką vertina Valstybinės vartotojų teisių apsaugos tarnyba?Šiandien Vilniuje, Šv. Kotrynos bažnyčioje, vyks vienos žymiausių sufijų muzikos grupių Fanna-fi-Alah koncertas. Šis pasirodymas yra grupės 25-mečio turo dalis ir pristato senąją kavalio – Šiaurės Indijoje ir Pakistane susiformavusios sufijų muzikos – tradiciją. Pokalbis su pasaulio muzikos koncertų Lietuvoje organizatoriumi, festivalio „Pasaulis skamba Šv. Kotrynos bažnyčioje“ rengėju Žilvinu Švarpliu.Pasaulio muzikos naujienose kompozitorius Jurgis Kubilius pasakoja apie „Opus Klassik“ laimėtojus, legendinio prancūziško operos žurnalo prisikėlimą ir Italijos kultūros ministro atšauktas sankcijas Putino bičiuliui dirigentui.Rubrikos „Be kaukių“ viešnia – organizacijos „Tušti narvai“ įkūrėja Gabrielė Vaitkevičiūtė.Ved. Justė Luščinskytė

Šakių rajono Griškabūdžio žemės ūkio bendrovėje šiemet anksti pavyko nupjauti žolę ir paruošti kokybišką šienainį būsimam gyvulių žiemojimui. Pasak technikos inžinieriaus Tomo Puskunigio, jei orai nesutrukdys, šį sezoną bendrovės žemdirbiai dar tikisi nuimti keturis žolės derlius.Miškų ir upių apsuptyje penkių kaimų gyventojus vienija Valkininkų kaimo bendruomenė. Iki šiol rekonstruoti, įrengti bendruomenės pastatai, tvarkyta ir skulptūromis puošta aplinka. O kur dar šventės, išsaugotos kaimų istorijos ir kita. Visu tuo rūpinasi kitus naujoms veikloms burianti, energinga bendruomenės pirmininkė Danutė Blažulionienė.Gamtininkas. Į viešąją įstaigą „Gerumo ąžuolas“ susibūrę įvairių profesijų žmonės. Jos viceprezidentas, Šakių rajono gyventojas Juozas Dainelis į įvairiomis progomis rengiamas ąžuolų sodinimo šventes sukviečia ir valdžios atstovus, ir šeimas su vaikais. Taip skirtingose vietovėse pasodinta per 20 tūkstančių ąžuolų, švarintos Ūlos, Merkio ir kitų upių pakrantės.Ved. Regina Montvilienė

Iki spalio pabaigos kartą per mėnesį - nemokami baseinai Vilniaus senjorams: galimybe jau pasinaudojo virš 2,2 tūkst. sostinės senjorų.Pristatytas tyrimas apie Dainų šventės poveikį emocinei ir fizinei savijautai. Rezultatai rodo, kad 100-mečio dainų šventėje žmones bene labiausiai vienijo V. Kernagio daina „Mūsų dienos kaip šventė“.Apklausos rodo, kad kas penkta moteris Lietuvoje yra patyrusi seksualinį priekabiavimą darbe. Apie daugelį tokių atvejų niekas nesužino, nes moterys baiminasi neigiamos kolegų, vadovų reakcijos.10–12. Ved. Ignas Andriukevičius

Iki spalio pabaigos kartą per mėnesį – nemokami baseinai Vilniaus senjorams: galimybe jau pasinaudojo virš 2,2 tūkst. sostinės senjorų. Apie šią iniciatyvą ir kaip sekasi mokytis plaukti, kai pradedi vyresnio amžiaus ar turi baimių – pokalbis LRT RADIJO laidoje „10-12“ su Simona Bieliūne, Vilniaus vicemerė, ir Simona Sigariova, plaukimo trenere, iniciatyvos „Plaukti neskęsti“ bendraautore.Ved. Ignas Andriukevičius

Tarptautinėje filosofijos olimpiadoje Vilniaus licėjaus dvyliktokė Gustė Antanaitytė pelnė sidabro medalį. Kaip sudominti jaunimą filosofiją? Kokią naudą jos išmanymas duoda?Klimato kaitos rubrika. Kas yra tvari mada ir kaip suprasti, kai šiomis sąvokomis manipuliuojama? Pokalbis su tvarios mados dizainere Olesia Les.Iki birželio 1d. vyksta „Poezijos pavasaris“. Pokalbis su poete Rūta Vižintaite-Lajiene, kuriai buvo įteikta Zigmo Gaidamavičiaus–Gėlės premija už geriausią pirmąją poezijos knygą. Jos knyga vadinasi „Liuksemburgo jūra“.Ved. Agnė Skamarakaitė

Lietuviškus savaitės dienų pavadinimus sugalvojo kalbininkas Jonas Jablonskis. Iki tol savaitės dienos vadintos slaviškos kilmės žodžiais.

#ikigai #propositodevida #felicidad #meditacion #omnitymeditacion #meditacionguiadaEl Ikigai se compone de cuatro bases fundamentales, que según la sabiduría ancestral Japonesa, son la fórmula que atrae a nuestra vida la plenitud y felicidad.Se compone de dos palabras: Iki; cuyo significado es "vida" y Gai; que representa el valor o méritos del ser.Mediante una música de frecuencia alta y una voz guiada que te acompañará durante este viaje. Una buena alternativa para INTERIORIZAR este interesante concepto para alcanzar la FELICIDAD y tu PROPÓSITO de VIDA.Esta meditación está dedicada con amor a Ana García.Comprueba que es fácil conectar con tu ser más poderoso, tu mism@.

(00:00:00) Ep 110 - Sub zero; Iki; l'adunanza dei malvagi; Flatiron (00:09:19) IKI (00:20:40) SubZero (00:35:07) Disney Villains L'adunanza dei malvagi (00:49:19) Flatiron Puntata numero 110SUPPORTA il PODCAST offrendoci un Caffè qui su KO-FIhttps://ko-fi.com/boardgamesofferteISCRIVITI A BOARDGAMES OFFERTE SU TELEGRAMhttps://t.me/BgOfferteISCRIVITI Alla chat di Esperienze di Gioco su Telegramhttps://t.me/EdgPodcastIn questa puntataIKIhttps://amzn.to/42R4vUjSUB ZEROhttps://bit.ly/4jQAsSTDisney Villains: L'Adunanza dei Malvagihttps://amzn.to/44z7ORhFlatironhttps://amzn.to/45495jmSparaci un Audiocommentohttps://www.speakpipe.com/EsperienzeDiGiocoAudioIscriviti al canale Youtube di Valetuttohttps://bit.ly/3TGPFJHIscriviti al canale Youtube de LaGiocoFamigliahttps://bit.ly/40wGr4VIscriviti al canale Youtube di Fabrizio!https://www.youtube.com/@CappellaioMoltoMattoSIGLEINTRO Otierre - La nuova realtàhttps://youtu.be/7DYMnYpDdT4ISCRIVITI A ZENCASTRhttps://zencastr.com/?via=EdgPodcast

Vokietijos parlamentarai šiandien palaikė Frydricho Merco kandidatūrą į šalies kanclerio postą po to, kai pirmajame ture jam nepavyko surinkti pakankamai balsų.Migrantai per Baltarusiją vėl aktyviai bando patekti į Europos sąjungą: prie trijų valstybių sienų sankirtos Kapčiamiesčio užkardos pasieniečiai šeštadienį fiksavo įžūlų bandymą patekti į Lenkiją.Iki gegužės 9 d. parado Maskvoje likus kelioms dienoms – masinė Ukrainos dronų ataka, sutrikdžiusi oro uostų darbą.Izraelio vyriausybė patvirtino naują karo veiksmų planą Gazos Ruožui, pagal kurį numatomas teritorijų užkariavimas ir jų išlaikymas neribotam laikui, perkeliant šimtus tūkstančių palestiniečių į ruožo pietus.Rytoj Vatikane prasideda konklava, kurios metu bus renkamas naujasis popiežius.Kaune prie Dariaus ir Girėno stadiono atidarytas Prezidento Valdo Adamkaus vardu pavadintas lengvosios atletikos maniežas. Šis maniežas – moderniausias Lietuvoje.Legendinę krepšininko karjerą baigęs 45-erių Mindaugas Lukauskis sieks tapti treneriu. Anot jo, atėjo laikas šeimai ir poilsiui.Ved. Agnė Skamarakaitė

Jungtinės Amerikos valstijos ir Ukraina pasirašė ilgai derintą susitarimą dėl Ukrainos naudingųjų iškasenų gavybos ir bendro fondo steigimo. Buvęs Ukrainos premjero patarėjas ir šiuo metu Kyjive dirbantis verslo konsultantas Adomas Audickas sako, kad susitarimas puikus tiek Ukrainai, tiek Jungtinėms valstijoms, tačiau netiki, kad reali mineralų kasyba gali prasidėti greitai. Pasak jo, sutartimi pasidalintas dar neiškeptas pyragas.Baigėsi stojamieji į atrankines Vilniaus mokyklas. Paaiškėjo, kad jos darosi vis populiaresnės ir stojančiųjų skaičiai kasmet auga. Negana to, atliktos tėvų apklausos rodo, kad vis dažniau aštuntokams samdomi korepetitoriai tam, kad moksleiviai įstotų į kuo geresnę gimnaziją. Savo ruožtu Vyriausybė planuoja tokių mokyklų išvis atsisakyti.Organizacijos „Reporteriai be sienų“ paskelbtame žiniasklaidos laisvės indekse Lietuva smuktelėjo viena vieta žemiau ir atsidūrė 14 vietoje. Praėjusiais metais Lietuva užėmė 13 vietą, o 2023 metais – rekordiškai aukštą - septintąją.Lietuvoje, atsiskaitant grynaisiais pradėta apvalinti pirkinių krepšelio suma. Iki šiol tokią praktiką taikė 7-ios euro zonos valstybės, o dabar prie jų prisijungė ir Lietuva.Ved. Liepa Želnienė

Following the death of Takara Hime, and the war on the Korean peninsula, Naka no Ōe was taking hold--or perhaps keeping hold--of the reins of government.  He wasn't finished with his changes to the government.  He also had a new threat--the Tang Empire.  They had destroyed Yamato's ally, Baekje, and defeated the Yamato forces on the peninsula.  While the Tang then turned their attention to Goguryeo, Yamato could easily be next.  The Tang had a foothold on the Korean peninsula, so they had a place to gather and launch a fleet, should they wish to bring Yamato into their empire. For more, especially to follow along with some of the names in this episode, check out our blogpost at https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-125     Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 125: The Sovereign of Heavenly Wisdom The people of Baekje looked around at the strange and unfamiliar land.  They had fled a wartorn country, and they were happy to be alive, but refugee status was hardly a walk in the park.  Fortunately, they still knew how to farm the land, even if their homeland was hundreds of miles away, across the sea, and occupied by hostile forces.  Here, at least, was a land where they could make a home for themselves. Some of them had to wonder whether this was really permanent.  Was their situation just temporary until their kingdom was restored?  Or were they truly the last people of Baekje, and what would that mean? Either way, it would mean nothing if they didn't work the land and provide for their families.  And so, as with displaced people everywhere, they made the best of the situation.  They had been given land to work, and that was more than they could have asked for.  They might never return to Baekje, but perhaps they could keep a little of it alive for themselves and their descendants. Greetings, everyone, and welcome back.  Last episode we talked about the downfall of Baekje and the defeat of the Yamato forces at the battle of Hakusukinoe, also known as the Battle of Baekgang, in 663.  And yet, something else happened as well: the sovereign, Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tennou, died as the Yamato forces were setting out.  Immediately Prince Naka no Oe took the reins of government.  He would be known to later generations as Tenji Tennou, with Tenji meaning something like “Heavenly Wisdom”. Now Prince Naka no Oe has been in the forefront of many of our episodes so far, so I'd like to start this episode out with a recap of what we've heard about him so far, as all of this is important to remind ourselves of the complex political situation.  I'm going to be dropping – and recapping – a lot of names, but I'll have many of the key individuals listed on the podcast website for folks who want to follow along.  I would note that this episode is going to be a summary, with some extrapolation by me regarding what was actually happening.  Just remember that history, as we've seen time and again, is often more messy and chaotic than we like, and people are more complex than just being purely good or evil.  People rarely make their way to the top of any social hierarchy purely through their good deeds.  To start with, let's go back to before the year 645, when Naka no Oe instigated a coup against Soga no Iruka and Soga no Emishi.  In the Isshi Incident, covered in Episode 106, Naka no Oe had Soga no Iruka murdered in court, in front of his mother, Takara Hime, when she sat on the throne the first time.  And yet, though he could have taken the throne when she abdicated in apparent shock, he didn't.  Instead, he took the role of “Crown Prince”, but this wasn't him just sitting back.  In fact, evidence suggests that he used that position to keep a strong hand on the tiller of the ship of state. Prior to the Isshi Incident of 645, the rule of the Yamato sovereign had been eroded by noble court families.  These families, originally set up to serve the court and its administration, had come to dominate the political structures of the court.  The main branch of the Soga family, in particular, had found its way to power through a series of astute political marriages and the support of a new, foreign religion:  Buddhism.  Soga no Iname, Emishi's grandfather, had married his daughters to the sovereigns, and thus created closer ties between the Soga and the royal line.  He also helped ensure that the offspring of those marriages would be the ones to take over as future sovereigns.  Soga no Iname, himself took the position of Oho-omi, the Great Omi, or the Great Minister, the head of the other ministerial families.  As Prime Minister, he held great sway over the day-to-day running of the court, and execution of much of the administration.  Much of this was covered in previous episodes, but especially episodes 88, 90, 91, 92, 95, 98, 99, and 103. Soga no Umako, who succeeded his father as Oho-omi, was joined in his effort to administer the government by his grand-nephew, Prince Umayado, also known as Shotoku Taishi, son of Tachibana no Toyohi, aka Youmei Tennou, and thus grandson of Umako's sister, Kitashi-hime, and the sovereign known as Kimmei Tennou.  Umayado's aunt, sister to Tachibana no Toyohi, was Kashikiya Hime, or Suiko Tennou.  The three of them:  Soga no Umako, Prince Umayado, and Kashikiya Hime, together oversaw the development of Yamato and the spread of Buddhism.  Buddhism was also controversial at first, but they turned it into another source of ritual power for the state—ritual power that Soga no Umako, Prince Umayado, and even Kashikiya Hime were able to harvest for their own use. Unfortunately, the Crown Prince, Umayado, died before Kashikiya hime, suddenly leaving open the question of who would take the throne.  Soga no Umako himself, passed away two years before Kashikiya Hime.  When she in turn passed away, there was another struggle for the throne, this time between the descendants of Crown Prince Umayado and Soga no Umako.  Eventually, Soga no Umako's son and heir, Soga no Emishi, made sure that a more pliant sovereign, Prince Tamura, would take the throne, and Prince Umayado's own son, Prince Yamashiro no Oe, was cut out of the succession.  Soga no Emishi, serving as prime minister, effectively ran things much as his father had.  When Tamura diedhis queen, Takara Hime, took the throne, rather than passing it back to Umayado's line—no doubt with Emishi's blessing.  He was careful, however, not to provoke direct action against Yamashiro no Oe, possibly due to the reverence in which Yamashiro's father, Prince Umayado, aka the Buddhist Saint Shotoku Taishi, was held.  Meanwhile, Emishi appears to have been cultivating his grandson by way of Prince Tamura, Furubito no Oe, to eventually succeed to the throne, trying to duplicate what his own father Umako and even grandfather had been able to accomplish. Soga no Emishi's son, Soga no Iruka, was not quite so temperate, however.   Who would have thought that growing up at the top of the social hierarchy might make one feel a bit arrogant and entitled?   When Soga no Emishi was ill, Soga no Iruka took over as Prime Minister, and he didn't just stand back.  He decided that he needed to take out Furubito no Oe's competition, and so he went after Yamashiro no Oe and had him killed. Unfortunately for him, he apparently went too far.  There were already those who were not happy with the Soga family's close hold on power—or perhaps more appropriately, this particular line of the Soga family.  This kind of behavior allowed a group of discontented royals and nobility to gain support. According to the popular story recounted in the Nihon Shoki, the primary seed of resistance started with a game of kickball, or kemari.  Nakatomi no Kamako, aka Nakatomi no Kamatari, was the scion of his house, which was dedicated to the worship of the traditional kami of Yamato.  The Nakatomi were ritualists: in charge of chanting ritual prayers, or norito, during court ceremony.  This meant that their powerbase was directly challenged by the increasing role of Buddhism, one of the Soga patriarchs' key influences on the political system. Kamatari was feeling out the politics of the court, and seemed to be seeking the support of royal family members who could help challenge the powerful Soga ministers.  He found that support in two places.  First, in Prince Karu, brother to Takara Hime, the current sovereign, who had been on the throne ever since her husband, Tamura, had passed away.  And then there was the Prince Katsuraki, better known to us, today, as Prince Naka no Oe.  A game of kemari, where a group of players tried to keep a ball in the air as long as they could, using only their feet, was a chance to get close to the Prince.  When Naka no Oe's shoe flew off in the middle of the match, Kamatari ran over to retrieve it.  As he offered the shoe back to its owner, they got to talking, and one of the most impactful bromances in Yamato history was born. The two ended up studying together.  The unification of the Yellow River and Yangzi basin regions under the Sui and Tang, and the expansion of the Silk Road, had repercussions felt all the way across the straits in Yamato.  Naka no Oe and Kamatari were both avid students and were absorbing all that the continent had to throw at them about philosophy and good governance.  As is so often the case, it seems like idealistic students were the fertile ground for revolutionary new thoughts. There were problems implementing their vision, however.  Although the Nihon Shoki claims that Naka no Oe was the Crown Prince, that honor was probably given to Prince Furubito no Oe, who would have no doubt perpetuated the existing power structures at court.  This is something that the Chroniclers, or perhaps those before them, glossed over and may have even tried to retconned, to help bolster the case that Naka no Oe was actually working for the common good and not just involved in a naked power grab for himself.  There is also the question as to where Yamashiro no Oe had stood in the succession, as he likely had a fair number of supporters. With the destruction of Yamashiro no Oe's family, however, the balance of power shifted.  Although Soga no Emishi had long been an influential member of the court, and not solely because of his role as Prime Minister, Soga no Iruka was relatively new to power.  Yamashiro no Oe's family, in turn, likely had a fair number of supporters, and even neutral parties may have been turned off by Iruka's violent methods to suppress an opponent who had already been defeated politically.  Naka no Oe and Kamatari seem to have seized on this discontent againt the Soga, but they needed at least one other conspirator.  They achieved this by offering a marriage alliance with Soga no Kurayamada no Ishikawa no Maro, a lesser member of the Soga household, whose own immediate family had been supporters of Yamashiro no Oe, and so likely had plenty of grievances with his cousins.  Naka no Oe married Ishikawa no Maro's daughter, Wochi no Iratsume, also known as Chinu no Iratsume.  Together, these three—Naka no Oe, Kamatari, and Ishikawa no Maro—brought others into their plot, and finally, in 645, they struck.  Soga no Iruka was killed at court, in front of a shocked Takara Hime and Prince Furubito no Oe.  By the way, this is another thing that suggests to me that Furubito no Oe was the Crown Prince, because why was he front and center at the ceremony, while Naka no Oe was able to skulk around at the edges, tending to things like the guards?  After the assassination at the court – the Isshi Incident -- Naka no Oe gathered forces and went after Soga no Emishi, since they knew they couldn't leave him alive.  With both Soga no Emishi and Soga no Iruka dead, and Takara Hime having abdicated the throne in shock at what had just occurred, Naka no Oe could have taken the throne for himself.  However, in what was probably a rather astute move on his part, he chose not to.  He recognized that Furubito no Oe's claim to the throne was possibly stronger, and those who had supported the Soga would not doubt push for him to take the throne.  And so, instead, he pushed for his uncle, Prince Karu, to ascend as sovereign.  Karu was Takara Hime's brother, and they could use Confucian logic regarding deference to one's elders to support him.  Plus, Karu's hands weren't directly bloodied by the recent conflict. As for Prince Furubito, he saw the way that the winds were blowing.  To avoid being another casualty, he retired from the world, taking the vows of a Buddhist monk.  However, there were still supporters who were trying to put him on the throne and eventually he would be killed, to avoid being used as a rallying point. Prince Karu, known as Jomei Tennou, ruled for around a decade. During that time, Naka no Oe and his reformers helped to cultivate a new image of the state as a bureaucratic monarchy.  Naka no Oe was designated the Crown Prince, and Nakatomi no Kamatari was made the “Inner Prime Minister”, or Naidaijin.  Ishikawa no Maro was made the minister of the  Right, while Abe no Uchimaro was made Minister of the Left, and they ran much of the bureaucracy, but the Naidaijin was a role more directly attached to the royal household, and likely meant that Kamatari was outside of their jurisdiction, falling into a position directly supporting Naka no Oe.  They instituted Tang style rank systems, and set up divisions of the entire archipelago.  They appointed governors of the various countries, now seen as provinces, and made them report up to various ministers, and eventually the sovereign.  After all, if you were going to manage everything, you needed to first and foremost collect the data.  This period is known as the Taika, or Great Change, period, and the reforms are known as the Taika reforms, discussed in episode 108. They even built a large government complex in the form of the Toyosaki Palace, in Naniwa, though this may have been a bit much—for more, check out episodes 112 and 113. Years into the project, though, things seem to have soured, a bit.  Rumors and slander turned Kamatari against his ally, Ishikawa no Maro, resulting in the death of Ishikawa no Maro and much of his family.  Naka no Oe and other members of the royal family eventually abandoned the Naniwa palace complex, leaving now-Emperor Karu and the government officials there to run the day-to-day administration, while much of the court made its way back to the Asuka area.  Karu would later pass away, but the throne still did not pass to Crown Prince Naka no Oe, despite his title.  Instead, the throne went back to Takara Hime.  This was her second reign, and one of only two split reigns like this that we know of.  The Chroniclers, who were creating posthumous titles for the sovereigns, gave her two names—Kogyoku Tennou for her reign up to 645, and then Saimei Tennou for her second reign starting in 655.   During her latter reign, Naka no Oe continued to wield power as the Crown Prince, and the Chroniclers don't really get into why she came back into power.  It may be that Naka no Oe, in his role as Crown Prince, had more freedom: although the sovereign is purportedly the person in power, that position can also be limiting.  There are specific things which the sovereign is supposed to do, rituals in which they are expected to partake.  In addition, there were restrictions on who was allowed into the inner sanctum of the palace, and thus limits on who could interact with the sovereign, and how.  That meant that any sovereign was reliant on intermediaries to know what was going on in their state and to carry out their orders.  As Crown Prince, Naka no Oe may have had more flexibility to do the things he wanted to do, and he could always leverage the sovereign's authority. When Baekje was destroyed, and Yamato decided to go to their aid, Naka no Oe appears to have had a strong hand in raising forces and directing movements, at least within the archipelago.  When Takara Hime passed away rather suddenly, he accompanied her funerary procession much of the way back, and then returned to Tsukushi—Kyushu—to direct the war.   This is the same thing that Toyotomi Hideyoshi would do when he sent troops to Korea in the late 16th century.  Moving headquarters closer to the continent would reduce the time between messages.  Theoretically he could have moved out to the islands of Iki or Tsushima, but I suspect that there were more amenities at Tsukushi, where they even built a palace for Takara Hime—and later Naka no Oe—to reside in.  It was likely not quite as spectacular as the full-blown city that Hideyoshi developed in a matter of months, but the court could also leverage the facilities previously created for the Dazaifu. The war took time.  This wasn't like some “wars” that were more like specific military actions.  This was a war that dragged on for several years, with different waves of ships going over to transport people and supplies.  Things came to a head in the 9th month of 663, roughly October or November on the Western calendar.  The Baekje resistance was under siege, and their only hope was a fleet of Yamato soldiers coming to their aid.  The Yamato fleet met with a much smaller Tang fleet at the mouth of the Baek River—the Hakusukinoe.  They attempted to break through the Tang blockade, but the Tang had positional advantage and were eventually able to counterattack, destroying the Yamato fleet.  Without their relief, the Baekje resistance fell. The remnants of the Yamato army, along with those Baekje nobles that were with them, headed out, fleeing back to the archipelago.  One presumes that there may have been other Baekje nobles, and their families, who had already made the trip. After the entry describing this rout, on the 24th day of the 9th month of 663, we have a gap in the Chronicles of just a little more than 4 months.  We then pick up with Naka no Oe's government starting to look at internal affairs.  For one thing, we are told that he selected his younger brother, the Royal Prince Ohoama, as Crown Prince, and he made updates to the cap-rank system, changing it from 19 ranks to 26 ranks.  The first six ranks remained the same, but the name “kwa”, or “flower”, for the 7th through 10th ranks was changed to “Kin”, meaning “brocade”.  Furthermore, a “middle” rank was added between the Upper and Lower ranks, further distinguishing each group, and adding 6 extra ranks.  Finally, the initial rank, Risshin, was divided into two:  Daiken and Shouken.  We aren't told why, but it likely meant that they could have more granular distinctions in rank. At the same time that was going on, the court also awarded long swords to the senior members of the great families, and short swords to the senior members of lesser families.  Below that, senior members of the Tomo no Miyatsuko and others were given shields and bows and arrows.  Furthermore, the vassals, or kakibe, and the domestic retainers, or yakabe, were settled, to use Aston's translation.  The kanji used in the text appears to refer to settling a decision or standardizing something, rather than settling as in giving a place to live.  It seems to me to mean that the court was settling servants on families: determining what kind and how many servants that various houses could have based on their position in the hierarchy.  I can't help but notice that all of these gifts were very martial in nature.  That does not mean, of course, that they were necessarily because of the war over Baekje, nor that they were in response to the concern about a possible Tang invasion -- we've seen in the past where swords were gifted to people who had served the court --but it is hard not to connect these gifts with recent worries.  We also know that this year, Naka no Oe turned his focus on building defenses, setting up guards and beacon fires on the islands of Tsushima and Iki.   Should any unknown fleet be seen coming to the archipelago, the fires would alert the forces at Kyushu, so they could send word and prepare a defense. In addition, the court built an impressive defense for Tsukushi—for the Dazai itself, the seat of the Yamato government in Kyushu.  It is called the Mizuki, or Water Castle, though at the time “castle” was more about walls and fortifications than the standalone fortress we tend to think of, today.  Along those lines, the Mizuki was an earthen embankment, roughly 1.2 kilometers long, extending from a natural ridgeline to the west across the Mikasa river.  Archeological evidence shows it had a moat, and this line of fortifications would have been a line of defense for the Dazai, should anyone try to invade.  This construction was so large and impressive that you can still see it, even today.  It stands out on the terrain, and it is even visible from overhead photographs. In the third month of 664, we are told that Prince Syeongwang of Baekje and his people, were given a residence at Naniwa.  In fact, even though Baekje was no longer an independent kingdom, there appear to have been thousands of Baekje people now living in Yamato, unable to return home.  Many of these were former nobles of the Baekje court, which Yamato treated as a foreign extension of its own.  Resettling these people would be a major theme for the Chronicles, but we will also see, as we read further on, how their talents were leveraged for the state. Also in the third month, a star fell in the north—it says “in the north of the capital”, but I suspect that anywhere north, south, east, or west of the capital would have seen the same thing “in the north”.  There was also an earthquake, which isn't given any particular significance, beyond its mention as a natural phenomenon. On the 17th day of the 5th month of 664, so roughly 2 months later, we are told that Liu Jen'yuan, the Tang dynasty's general in Baekje, sent Guo Wucong  to Yamato with a letter and gifts.  We aren't told the contents of the letter, but one imagines that this may have been a rather tense exchange.  Yamato had just been involved in open warfare against Tang forces on the peninsula, and they still weren't sure if the Tang empire would come after them next.  Their only real hope on that front was Goguryeo, since the Tang and Silla were still trying to destroy the Goguryeo kingdom, and that may have kept the Tang forces tied up for a while.  No doubt Guo Wucong would have seen some of the defenses that Yamato was constructing during his visit. Guo Wucong would hang around for about seven and a half months.  He was given permission to take his leave on the 4th day of the 10th month.  Naka no Oe had his friend and Inner Prime Minister, Nakatomi no Kamatari send the Buddhist Priest, Chisho, with presents for Guo Wucong, and he and his officers were granted entertainments  before they left as well. Finally, Guo Wucong and his people returned to the Tang on the 12th day of the 12th month. While the delegation from the Tang was in Yamato, we are told of several tragedies.  First was that Soga no Murajiko no Oho-omi had passed away.  Soga no Murajiko appears to have been another son of Soga no Kuramaro, and thus brother to Soga no Ishikawa no Maro.  Unfortunately, we don't have much more on him in the record. Just a month later, we are told that the “Dowager Queen” Shima passed away.  Aston translates this as the Queen Grandmother, suggesting that she was Naka no Oe's grandmother. We are also told, that in the 10th month of 664, around the time that Guo Wucong was given leave to depart, that Yeon Gaesomun, the Prime Minister—though perhaps more correctly the despotic ruler—of Goguryeo, died.  It is said that he asked his children to remain united, but, well, even if we didn't know how it all turned out, I think we would look somewhat skeptically on any idea that they all did exactly as they were told.  Sure enough, in 667 we are told that Gaesomun's eldest son, Namseng, left the capital city of Pyongyang to tour the provinces, and while he was gone his younger brothers conspired with the nobility, and when he came back they refused to let him back in.  So Namseng ran off to the Tang court and apparently helped them destroy his own country. This is largely corroborated by other stories about Goguryeo, though the dates do seem to be off.  Tang records put Gaesomun's death around 666 CE, which the Samguk Sagi appears to follow, but on his tomb the date would appear to be 665.  Confusion like this was easy enough given the different dates and trying to cross-check across different regnal eras.  Sure, there were some commonalities, but it was very easy to miscount something. One last note from the twelfth month of 664—it seems that there were omens of apparent prosperity that came to the court from the island of Awaji.    First, there was rice that grew up in a farmer's pig trough.  The farmer's name is given as Shinuta no Fumibito no Mu, and Mu gathered this rice and stored it up, and thus, every day his wealth increased.  Then there was the bridal bed of Iwaki no Sukuri no Oho, of Kurimoto district.  They claimed that rice grew up at the head of his brides' mattress during her first night's stay with him.  And this wasn't just some brand new shoot, but overnight it formed an ear, and by the morning it bent down and ripened.  Then, the following night, another ear was formed.  When the bride went out into the courtyard, two keys fell down from heaven, and after she gave them to her husband, Oho, he went on to become a wealthy man. The exact purpose of these stories is unclear, but it seems to be that the Chroniclers are choosing to focus on stories of wealth and growth, which speak to how they wanted this reign as a whole, including the sovereign, to be remembered. However, more tragedy struck the following year, in 665,  when Hashibito, another Dowager Queen – this time the wife of Karu, aka Koutoku Tennou - passed away on the 25th day of the 2nd month.  On the first day of the 3rd month, 330 people took Buddhist vows for her sake. We are also told that in the second month the ranks of Baekje were cross-referenced with the ranks of Yamato, and then ranks were given out to some of the Baekje nobles that had come over to Yamato.  Kwisil Chipsa, who was originally ranked “Dalsol” in Baekje, was accorded “Lower Shoukin”.  That was rank 12 of the 26.  In comparison, “Dalsol” seems to have been the 2nd rank of 16 in Baekje.  Along with handing out rank, over 400 Baekje commoners, both men and women, were given residence in the Kanzaki district in Afumi.  This appears to be an area along the Aichi river, running from the Suzuka Mountains, west towards Lake Biwa. The court granted them rice-lands in the following month.  At the same time, several high ranking Baekje nobles were put in charge of building castles at strategic points around the archipelago.  These included one castle in Nagato, as well as the castles of Ohono and Woyogi, in Tsukushi.  Two years later, in 667, we also see the building of Takayasu castle, in Yamato and Yashima castle in Yamada, in Sanuki—modern Kagawa, on Shikoku, facing the Seto Inland Sea passageway.  Kaneda castle in Tsushima was also a Baekje-built one. We mentioned something about these castles last episode.  They were in the Baekje style, and as I said, the term “castle” here is more about the walls, which were largely made of rammed earth ramparts.  This means that you pile up earth and dirt in a layer and then the laborers use tools specifically to tamp it down until it is thick and hard.  Then another layer is piled on top and the process is repeated.  These walls were often placed on mountain tops, and they would follow the terrain, making them places that were easy to defend.  Beyond that, they didn't necessarily have a donjon keep or anything like that—maybe a tower so that one could see a little further, but being at the top of a mountain usually provided all the visual cues that one needed. We know there were other castles made as well.  For example, I mentioned last week about Kinojo, in Okayama, the ancient Kibi area.  Kinojo is not mentioned in the Nihon Shoki, but it clearly existed back then, and matches the general description of a 7th century mountain castle as built in Baekje.  The name means Demon Castle, and there is a story about it that is connected to the local Kibitsu Jinja—the Shrine to Prince Kibi.  According to legend, Kibitsu Hiko, aka Prince Kibitsu or, perhaps more appropriately, the Prince of Kibi, came to the area around the time of the Mimaki Iribiko, so probably about the 3rd century, at the head of a large force.  Kibitsu Hiko had come to defeat the demon, Ura, who lived in the nearby castle, hence Kinojo, and legend says that he freed the people from the demon's rule. As I also mentioned, last week, this particular castle may have ended up in the Momotaro story.  There are those who believe that the story of Momotarou is based on the story of Prince Kibitsu Hiko, and his defeat of the so-called demon, “Ura”.   Certainly the story has grown more fantastical, and less connected to the ancient history of the Kibi region, but it still may have its origin in a much more standard legend of a founding prince of the ancient Kibi kingdom that was later changed into a fairy tale.   More likely, the castle was built by a Baekje nobleman, often thought to be a prince, who settled in the area.  There is the possibility that the demon's name “Ura” came from a mistranslation of his name, or it is also possible that he was unrelated to the story at all.  The Kibitsu Hiko legend may have incorporated the castle, Kinojo, at a later date, once people had forgotten when and why the castle was actually built. It would make sense if Kinojo had been built as part of the defenses for Yamato, as that area overlooks a large part of the fertile plains of Okayama and out beyond Kojima to the Seto Inland Sea -- it is perched over a key overland route from the western edge of Honshu to Yamato, and there would have been several ways to signal boats to put to sea to intercept forces on the water.  . This all suggests to me that Kinojo was probably part of Naka no Oe's castle-building effort, even if it isn't specifically remembered in the Chronicle.  But building castles wasn't enough to bring peace of mind that Yamato would survive a Tang invasion, and it is possibly as a defensive measure that Naka no Oe would go on to do something truly incredible—he would eventually move the capital from Asuka and Naniwa all the way to the shores of Lake Biwa itself, establishing the Ohotsu palace.  This was a truly extreme step that didn't endear Naka no Oe to the court, but it had several advantages.  For one thing, this move pulled the capital further away from the sea routes, meaning that if they were attacked, they had a more defensible position.  Even more so than Yamato, the Afumi region around Lake Biwa is surrounded by mountains, with a few narrow passes that restricted movement in and out. One of these is the famous Sekigahara, which remained a choke point even up to modern times.  The name even means the Field of the Barrier, indicating the barrier and checkpoint that had been set up there in ancient times.  Moving the capital also pulled the court away from some of the previous political centers, which may have been another feature that made it attractive to Naka no Oe.  Many capital moves have been made, at least in part, to get farther away from strong Buddhist temples, and this certainly would have moved things out of the Asuka region, which by now was a hotbed of Buddhist temple activity. But we'll talk about that all more, next episode.  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

Iki gegužės 2 d. gyventojai turi galimybę ne tik deklaruoti pajamas, bet ir skirti paramą. Kam gyventojai skiria savo 1,2 proc. pajamų mokesčio ir ar jiems paprasta tai padaryti?Viešoji įstaiga „Siena“, siekianti užtikrinti migrantų, pabėgėlių ir prieglobsčio siekėjų teises pagal tarptautinius įsipareigojimus, išplatino pranešimą, kad žmogaus teisių organizacija „Amnesty International“ kviečia užsieniečius, kurie buvo sulaikyti Lietuvoje 2021–2022 m., prisijungti prie grupės skundo teismui.Parlamentarams siūlant įvesti nemokamą maitinimą visiems pradinukams, Vyriausybė tą numato padaryti 2028 metais. Prieš metus įstatymas buvo pateiktas Seimui, tuomet siūlytą nemokamą maitinimą visiems pradinukams suteikti nuo tų metų liepos 1 d. Anot išvadą parengusių Socialinės apsaugos ir darbo ministerijos atstovų, šiuo metu valstybė neturi finansinių išteklių įgyvendinti tokį projektą.Siekdama didesnio kelių eismo saugumo ir geresnės oro kokybės visoje Europos Sąjungoje, Komisija siūlo iš esmės peržiūrėti Bendrijos kelių eismo saugumo ir transporto priemonių registracijos taisykles. Viena jų – įdiegti skaitmeninius transporto priemonių registracijos ir periodinės techninės apžiūros pažymėjimus ir įpareigoti vairuojančius 10 metų ar senesnius automobilius techninę apžiūrą atlikti kasmet.Ved. Darius Matas.

Dėl vakar kilusio gaisro atliekų rūšiavimo įmonėje pradėtas ikiteisminis tyrimas. Vilniaus valdžia sprendžia, kaip toliau tvarkyti atliekas.Amerikos valstybės sekretorius teigia, kad ši savaitė gali būti lemiama siekiant užbaigti karą Ukrainoje. Prezidentas Donaldas Trumpas įsitikinęs, kad Ukraina susitaikys su Krymo praradimu.Žurnalistinis tyrimas atskliedžia, kur išplaukė milijonai eurų, kuriuos gyventojai investavo į „Bankeros“ kripto-žetonus.Europos Komisija siūlo iš esmės peržiūrėti kelių eismo saugumo ir transporto priemonių registracijos taisykles. Senesniems kaip 10-ies metų automobiliams techninė apžiūra būtų privaloma kasmet.Iki gegužės 2 dienos gyventojai turi galimybę ne tik deklaruoti pajamas, bet ir skirti paramą. Valstybinės mokesčių inspekcijos duomenimis, šiemet jau daugiau nei 200 tūkstančių žmonių pateikė prašymus skirti paramą, o pernai tokių buvo beveik pusė milijono. Kam gyventojai skiria savo 1,2 procentą pajamų mokesčio ir ar jiems paprasta tai padarytiVed. Andrius Kavaliauskas.

Šiandien prasideda festivalis „Pasaulis skamba“, publikai pristatysiantis pasaulio muzikos grupes iš skirtingų kraštų: nuo Armėnijos iki Kanados. Pokalbis su festivalio vadovu Žilvinu Švarpliu.Ketvirtus metus jaunuosius skaitytojus kviečia vaikų knygų festivalis „Gyvos raidės“. Kuo jis svarbus mokyklinio ir ikimokyklinio amžiaus skaitytojams? Kokie pagrindiniai šių metų festivalio akcentai? Pokalbis su „Gyvos raidės“ idėjos autore Audrone Meškauskaite.Plotis – 20 metrų, aukštis - 6 metrai. Tai Povilo Dūdos drobės, ant kurios jis atspaudė troleibusą, dydis. Kodėl menininkas nusprendė tą padaryti? Jo klausia Marius Eidukonis.Lietuvos kompozitorių sąjunga paskelbė Lietuvos kompozitorių 2024 metų kūrinių penkioliktuką. Iki gegužės 12 d. už labiausiai patikusį gali balsuoti ir klausytojai. Tradiciškai, LRT KLASIKOS laidose pristatome visus 15 kūrinių, apie kuriuos pasakoja jų autoriai. Šiandien kviečiame susipažinti su kompozitorės Justinos Repečkaitės kūriniu, patekusiu į geriausių sąrašą – tai jos kompozicija „La muë“ (tarti – lia miu) serpentui, vaikų chorui ir elektronikai. Apie kūrinį pasakoja pati kompozitorė.Anykščiuose kuriančios keturios kūrėjos kviečia aplankyti jungtinę parodą „Kūrybinė laboratorija numeris 2: tušas”. Tai paroda apie balansą: tarp meno ir dizaino, tarp eksperimento ir praktiškumo, tarp vidinio pasaulio ir kasdienybės. Parodoje lankėsi ir kūrėjas kalbino Simona Ševčenkaitė.Rubrikos „Be kaukių“ svečias – grupės „Katarsis“ vokalistas Lukas Radzevičius. Kaip jis kartu su grupe atrado savo skambesį ir savo klausytoją? Ar nacionalinėje „Eurovizijos“ atrankoje užgriuvusi laimėtojų laimė nevargina?Ved. Gerūta Griniūtė

Lietuva, Latvija ir Estija vienijasi ir baltiškojo džiazo kultūrą kartu pristato tarptautinėje džiazo mugėje „Jazzahead! 2025“ Vokietijoje. Apie baltiškąjį džiazą ir mugės esmę – Lietuvos džiazo federacijos atstovai iš Brėmeno.Kauną nuo šiandien vėl užtvindys džiazas: prasideda jau 35-tą kartą rengiamas festivalis „Kaunas Jazz“, kuris tradiciškai siūlo miesto ir jo svečių publikai pačius įvairiausius koncertus. Šis festivalis dedikuojamas M.K. Čiurlionio 150-osioms gimimo metinėms paminėti. O minėdamas simbolinę renginio sukaktį, į programą Kaunas JAZZ įtraukia ir atlikėjus, praeityje sužavėjusius šio renginio publiką.„Hommage à Čiurlionis“ dviejų dalių šiuolaikinės choreografijos programa Klaipėdos valstybinis muzikinis teatras šeštadienį pradeda antruosius savo gyvavimo naujame pastate metus. Pasakoja Agnė Bukartaitė.Pasaulio muzikos naujienose kompozitorius Jurgis Kubilius pasakoja apie po mirties muziką kuriančias kompozitoriaus „smegenis“, Milano „La Scala“ operos teatro ateinančio sezono planus bei ką tik išleistą popiežiaus Pranciškaus muzikos grojaraštį.Lietuvos kompozitorių sąjunga paskelbė Lietuvos kompozitorių 2024 metų kūrinių penkioliktuką. Iki gegužės 12 d. už labiausiai patikusį gali balsuoti ir klausytojai. Tradiciškai, LRT KLASIKOS laidose pristatome visus 15 kūrinių, apie kuriuos pasakoja jų autoriai. Šiandien kviečiame susipažinti su dar vienu kompozitorės Rūtos Vitkauskaitės kūriniu, patekusiu į geriausių sąrašą – tai jos kompozicija „Cracks“ violončelei ir loop pedalui.Rubrikoje „Be kaukių“ - vargonininkas ir klavesinininkas Vilimas Norkūnas.Ved. Gabija Narušytė

Per savo asmenines patirtis Agnietė Lisičkinaitė ir Igoris Shugaleevas šokio spektaklyje CLAP&SLAP nagrinėja sudėtingą ir paralyžiuojančią įtampą Rytų Europoje.Koks yra senųjų dvarų likimas ir kokia ateitis? Apie Europos dvarų istoriją, kultūrą ir paveldą tarptautinėje konferencijoje diskutuos Europos mokslininkai. Kalbamės su viena iš renginio organizatorių VDU Kavolio instituto mokslininke, dr. Aušra Vasiliauskiene.Paauglė Ema susiginčija su šeima. Ji jaučiasi nesuprasta ir pagalvoja, jog ir pati norėtų kitų nesuprasti. Jos noras netikėtai išsipildo ir Ema atsiduria pasaulyje, kur visi aplinkiniai kalba jai nesuprantama kalba. Naujausias Klaipėdos dramos teatro spektaklis „Ką sakai?“ narplioja paauglių santykius su aplinkiniais. Apie prarastus ryšius kolegei Agnei Bukartaitei papasakojo spektaklio kūrėjai ir jaunieji aktoriai.Lietuvos kompozitorių sąjunga paskelbė Lietuvos kompozitorių 2024 metų kūrinių penkioliktuką. Iki gegužės 12 d. už labiausiai patikusį gali balsuoti ir klausytojai. Tradiciškai, LRT KLASIKOS laidose pristatome visus 15 kūrinių, apie kuriuos pasakoja jų autoriai. Šiandien kviečiame susipažinti su kompozitorės Rūtos Vitkauskaitės Koncertu smuikui su orkestru. Apie kūrinį pasakoja pati kompozitorė.Kaip išversti knygą, kurioje atsispindi tragiškos žmonių patirtys ir netekties skausmas? Kaip apie karą papasakoti vaikams? Ką gali papasakoti muzika? Rubrikos „Be kaukių“ viešnia – aktorė, vertėja iš ukrainiečių kalbos Donata Rinkevičienė.Ved. Jolanta Kryževičienė

Balandžio 24 d. Samuelio Bako muziejuje atidaroma menininko iš Niujorko Steve Marcus paroda „Sk8 Art: Vilnius Niujorko ritmu“. Joje bus eksponuojamos menininko ištapytos riedlentės. Kūryboje jungdamas gatvės meną ir žydišką ikonografiją, jis kviečia geriau pažinti žydų kultūrą.Telšiai puošiasi naujais meno kūriniais. Masčio ežero pakrantėje pristatyta dar viena bronzinė meškutė. Ją sukūręs skulptorius Simonas Grigutis sako, kad tai jau 7-as jo meškinas. Šis skirtas skautams. Iš Telšių pasakoja Tomas Mizgirdas.Lietuvos kompozitorių sąjunga paskelbė Lietuvos kompozitorių 2024 metų kūrinių penkioliktuką. Iki gegužės 12 d. už labiausiai patikusį gali balsuoti ir klausytojai. Tradiciškai, LRT KLASIKOS laidose pristatome visus 15 kūrinių, apie kuriuos pasakoja jų autoriai. Šiandien kviečiame susipažinti su kompozitorės Dainoros Aleksaitės „Habanera“ trims balsams, dronui ir fiksuotai medijai. Apie kūrinį pasakoja pati kompozitorė.Rokiškio kultūros centro koridoriuose galima sutikti naują veidą. Tai režisierė Ignė Barkauskaitė. Daug metų užsienio teatruose praleidusi Ignė nuo šių metų perėmė vaikų ir jaunimo teatro vairą. Rokiškyje lankėsi ir su režisiere Igne Barkauskaite kalbėjosi kolegė Simona Ševčenkaitė.Rubrikoje „Be kaukių“ – smuikininkė Vitalija Makrickienė.Ved. Gerūta Griniūtė

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Pavasaris ragina žemdirbius dažniau pasidairyti laukuose, džiūstant dirvoms pradėti įprastus darbus. Nors Dzūkijos žemėse žymiai sudėtingiau ūkininkauti, gaunami mažesni derliai, bet atkaklūs dzūkai žemės neapleidžia. „Tik žymiai pabrangusios trąšos, chemikalai ir kt. verčia daugiau skaičiuoti ir taupyti“, – svarsto Varėnos r. Dubičių žemės ūkio bendrovės vadovas Stasys Kėrys. Nuotaikas kitose šalies bendrovėse aptaria Žemės ūkio bendrovių asociacijos generalinis direktorius Jonas Sviderskis.Žemės ūkyje prasideda darbymetis, darbams atlikti reikia ir daugiau darbuotojų. Ūkiuose trumpam galima dirbti ir pagal sezonines darbo sutartis, ir teikiant paslaugas ūkininkams, miškininkams, bendrovėms vykdant individualią veiklą ar pagal paslaugų teikimo kvitus. Darbo inspekcijos Neteisėtos veiklos priežiūros skyriaus patarėjas Edgar Lisica įspėja, darbo santykiai turi būti įforminti tinkamai. Pasiteisinimo, kad dirbu tik vieną dieną, ar noriu pabandyti ūkio darbus – nėra. Gresia administracinė atsakomybė darbdaviui arba paslaugas teikusiam asmeniui.Didžiausias Europoje japoniškas sodas prieš 17 metų įkurtas Kretingos rajone. Mažučių kaime. Jį pradėjo ir dabar kasmet atvyksta toliau puoselėti, įgyvendinti naujų sumanymų 50 metų patirtį turintis meistras iš Japonijos Hajime Watanabe. Iki šiol 16-os hektarų plote ne tik akmenų rate išdėlioti akmenys, iškasti tvenkiniai, supiltos kalvos, pasodinta per 500 sakurų, spygliuočių ir lapuočių medžių, per 1000 bonzų ir kitų grožybių. Japoniško sodo tradicija čia toliau kuriamas grožis, įspūdingas visais metų laikais. Pavasarį jis suspindi sakurų žydėjimu, o rudenį – įvairiaspalviu lapų grožiu. Pasakoja japoniško sodo prižiūrėtoja Gražina Maštaraitė.Ved. Regina Montvilienė

Gaminantys vartotojai, įsirengę elektros energijos kaupimo įrenginius, jau nuo šiandien gali sulaukti valstybės paramos. Kreiptis dėl paramos gyventojai kviečiami tik po elektros energijos kaupiklio įsirengimo savo namuose.„Aktualus klausimas“ - ar pritartumėte keturių dienų darbo savaitei? Du trečdaliai Lietuvos gyventojų teigia, jog norėtų 4 darbo dienų savaitės Lietuvoje, dalis iš jų net jei dėl to sumažėtų atlyginimas. 15 proc. to nenorėtų bet kokiu atveju. Tokius duomenis rodo LRT užsakymu atlikta apklausa.Toliau smunkant pasaulio akcijų rinkoms - kritimus savo sąskaitose stebi ir investuojantys tautiečiai. Vieni dėl sąskaitų tuštėjimo nerimauja ir svarsto investavimą nutraukti, kiti - atvirkščiai - nebijo ir mato daugiau galimybių nei grėsmių.Iki 2030-ųjų krašto apsaugai Lietuva siekia skirti 5–6 proc.nuo BVP. Pinigų numatoma gauti iš įvairių šaltinių. Tarp jų Prezidentas siūlo Seimui padidinti Lietuvos banko pelno įmoką į valstybės biudžetą, didžiąją šių lėšų dalį skiriant Valstybės gynybos fondui. Kaip papildomų pinigų skyrimas gynybai paveiks Lietuvos ekonomiką?Pirmosios šarvuotosios divizijos sukūrimas Lietuvoje svarbus ne tik tuo, kad suteiks šaliai papildomų karinių pajėgumų, bet ir pagerins kariuomenės vadovybės integraciją ir koordinaciją bendrose NATO pajėgose. Taip sako Pensilvanijos nacionalinės gvardijos generolas viešėjęs Vilniuje Baltijos karinėje konferencijoje.Ved. Rūta Kupetytė

This episode we will discuss various embassies to and from Yamato during the reign of Takara Hime, with a particular focus on the embassy of 659, which occured at a particularly eventful time and happened to be extremely well-recorded fro the period by Iki no Hakatoko, who was apparently on the mission to the Tang court itself. For more, check out our blog post at: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-123 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 123: Embassy Interrupted.   Iki no Hakatoko sat in his room, gazing out at the city.   It was truly an amazing place, filled with all kinds of people from around the world.  And yet, still, after 9 months of confinement, the place felt small.  Sure, there he hadwere visits from ranking nobles and dignitaries, but even the most lenient of house arrests was still house arrest. But that didn't mean that he had nothing to do.  There were books and more that he had access to—many that had not yet made it to the archipelago, and some of which he no doubt hoped he could bring back with him.  And of course, there was paper, brush, and ink. And then there were the experiences he and others had acquired on this mission to the Great Tang.  From the very beginning the missionit washad been plagued with disaster when they lost half of their ships and company mission to rogue winds on the open seas.  Now they were trapped because the Emperor himself wouldn't let them return home.  They had experienced and seen so much, and that provided ample material for one to catalogue. As the seasons changed, and rumors arrived that perhaps his situation would also something would change soon, Iki no Hakatoko spread out the paper on the desk in front of him, dipped his brush in the ink, and began to write.  He wrote down notes about his experiences, and what had befallen him and the others.  He had no idea who It is unclear whom he thought might read it, and if he was intending this to be an official or personal record, but he wrote it down anyway. Hakatoko He couldn't have known then that his words would eventually be captured in a much larger work, chronicling the entire history of Yamato from its very creation, nor that his would be one of the oldest such personal accounts records to be handed down.  His Itwords  wwould only survive in fragments—or perhaps his writing was simply that terse—but his words they would be preserved, in a format that was still being read over a thousand years later.     Last episode we finished up the story of Xuanzang and his Journey to the West—which is to say the Western Regions -- , and thence on to India, or Tianzhu, where he walked in the footsteps of the historical Buddha, studied the scriptures at the feet of venerable teachers, such as Silabadhra at the Great Monastery of Nalanda, and eventually wound up bringingbrought back hundreds of manuscripts to Chang'an to , which he and others be translated and disseminated, impacting Buddhist thought across East Asia.  HisXuanzang's travels lasted from around 629 to 645, and he was still teaching in Chang'an in the 650s when various student-monks from Yamato  arrived to study and learn from him, eventually bringing back his teachings to the archipelago as part of the Faxiang, or Hossou, school of Buddhism. Before that we talked about the visitors from “Tukhara” and “Sha'e” recorded in the Chronicles.  As we noted, these peopley were morest likely from the Ryukyuan islands, and the names may have been conflated with distant lands overseas – but regardless, .  Whether or not it was a mistake, this it does seem to indicated that Yamato had at least an inkling of the wider world, introduced through the continental literature that they had been importing, if not the direct interactions with individuals from the Korean peninsula and the Tang court. This episode, we're going to talk about some of the relations between Yamato and the continent, including the various embassies sent back and forth, as well as one especially detailed embassy from Yamato to the Tang Court that found itself in a bit of a pickle.  After all, what did you do, back in those days, when you were and ambassador, and your country suddenly went to war?  We'll talk about that and what happened. To reorient ourselves in time, we're in the reign of Takara Hime, called aka Kyogoku Tennou during her first reign, who had reascended to the throne in 655, following the death of her brother, Prince Karu.  The Chroniclers would dub her Saimei Tennou in her second run on the throne. From the very beginning of her second reign, Takara Hime was entertaining foreign envoys.  In 654, the Three Han of the Korean Peninsula—Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla—all sent ambassadors to express their condolence on the death of her brother, and presumably to witness her ascension.  And in the 8th month of her reign, Kawabe no Maro no Omi, along with others, returned from Chang'an.  He Kawabe no Maro no Omi had been the Chief Ambassador to the Tang on an embassy sent , traveling there in the 2nd month of the previous year.  Originally he had been He was under the command of the controlling envoy, Takamuku no Obito no Kuromaro, but Kuromaro who unfortunately died in Chang'an and so Kawabe no Mari no Omi took over his role. That same year, 655, we know that there were about 100 persons recorded in Yamato from Baekje, along with envoys of Goguryeo and Silla.  These are likely the same ones we mentioned back in episode 117 when 150 Baekje envoys were present at court along with multiple members of the Emishi. Silla, for their part, had sent to Yamato a special hostage , whom we know as something like “Mimu”, along with skilled workmen.  Unfortunately, we are told that Mimu fell ill and died.  The Chronicles are pretty sparse on what this meant, but I can't imagine it was great.  After all, the whole idea of sending a hostage to another nation was as a pledge of good behavior – the idea being that the hostage was the idea that they werewas valuable enough that the sending nation wouldn't do anything too rash.  The flip side of that is if the hostage died, Of course, if they perished, the hosting country lost any leverage—and presumably the sending nation would be none too pleased.  That said, people getting sick and passing away was hardly a hostile action, and likely just considered an unfortunate situation. The following year, in 656, we see that Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla again all sent ambassadords were all sent to offer “tribute”.  The Chronicles mention that dark purple curtains were drawn around the palace site to entertain the ambassadors—likely referring to the new palace site at Asuka no Wokamoto, which probably was not yet fully built out, yet.   We are given the name of the Goguryeo ambassador, Talsa, and associate ambassador, Ilchi,  in the 8th month, Talsa and Ilichi, with 81 total members in the Goguryeo retinueof the embassy.  In seeming response, Yamato sent an embassy was sent to Goguryeo with the likes of Kashiwade no Omi no Hatsumi as the Chief Ambassador and Sakahibe no Muraji no Iwasuki as the Associate Ambassador.  Other names mentioned include We also see the likes of Inugami no Shiromaro, Kawachi no Fumi no Obito—no personal name is given—and Ohokura no Maro.  We also see thea note in the Chronicles that Yamato ambassadors to the quote-unquote “Western Sea”—which seems to refer to the Tang court, but could possibly refer to anything from the Korean Peninsula west—returned in that same year.  The two are named as Saheki no Muraji no Takunaha and Oyamashita no Naniha no Kishi no Kunikatsu.  These are both families that were clearly involved in cross-strait relations , based on how they are frequently referenced in the Chronicles as being associated with various overseas missions.  but  However, we don't seem to have clear evidence of them when these particular individualsy leavingft on this mission.  “Kunikatsu” mightay refer to an earlier ambassador to Baekje, but the names are different, so that is largely just speculation.  In any case, Uupon their return, they are said to have brought with them a parrot.  This wasn't the first parrot the court had seen—that feathery traveler had arrived in 647, or at least that is the first parrotinstance  we have in the written record -- .  Aand that one came from Silla as part of that embassy's gifts. Continuing on, in 657, The following year there was another group of ambassadors returned coming  from the “Western Seas”, in this case coming back from—or through—Baekje.  Thisese wasere Adzumi no Muraji no Tsuratari and Tsu no Omi no Kutsuma.  The presents they brought back were, of all things:  one camel and two donkeys.  And can you imagine bringing a camel back across the sea at this point?  Even if they were using the larger ships based on continental designs, it still must have been something else to put up with a camel and donkeys onboard, animals that are not exactly known for their easy-going and compliant nature. Speaking of boats, we should probably touch on what we *think* they were usinghas been going on here.  I say *think* because we only get glimpses  of the various boats being used in the archipelago, whether from mentions in or around Yamato, archaeology, or artistic depictions, many of which came from later periods., and wSo while it is generally assumed that they the Yamato were using Tang style vessels by the 8th and 9th century, there does not appear to be clear evidence of exactly what kind of boats were being used during the early earlier periods of contact. A quick note on boat technology and navigation: while travel between the Japanese archipelago and the Korean Peninsula, and up the Yellow Sea, wasn't safe, it would have been possible with the vessels of the time.  Japan sits on the continental shelf, meaning that to the east where the shelf gives way to the Pacific Ocean with the Phillippine Sea to the south, the waters are much, much deeper than they are to the west.  In deep waters, waves are not necessarily affected by the ocean floor, meaning they can build up much more energy and require different kinds of technology to sail.  In shallower areas, such as the Sea of Japan, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea or the Korean Straits to the west of the archipelago, there's more drag that dampens out the wave effect – it's not that these areas are uniformly shallow and calm, but they are calmer and easier to navigate in general.  Our oldest example of boats in the archipelago of any kind are dugout canoes, .  These are logs that are hollowed out  and shaped. , and tThese appear to be what Jomon era populations used to cross to the archipelago and travel between the various islands.  Though they may be considered primitive, without many of the later innovations that would increase stability and seaworthiness—something I'll touch on more a bit later—, they were clearly effective enough to populate the islands of the Ryukyuan chain and even get people and livestock, in the form of pigs, down to the Hachijo islands south of modern Tokyo.    So they weren't ineffective. Deep waters mean that the waves are not necessarily affected by the ocean floor.  Once it hits shallower water, there is more drag that affects larger waves.  This means that there can be more energy in these ocean waves.  That usually means that shallower areas tend to be more calm and easier to navigate—though there are other things that can affect that as well. We probably should note, however, that Japan sits on the edge of the continental shelf.  To the west, the seas are deep, but not nearly as deep as they are to the east, where continental shelf gives way to the Pacific ocean, with the Philippine Sea to the south.  These are much deeper waters than those of the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, or the Korean Straits.  The Sea of Japan does have some depth to it, but even then it doesn't compare in both size and depth. Deep waters mean that the waves are not necessarily affected by the ocean floor.  Once it hits shallower water, there is more drag that affects larger waves.  This means that there can be more energy in these ocean waves.  That usually means that shallower areas tend to be more calm and easier to navigate—though there are other things that can affect that as well. All this to say that travel between the Japanese archipelago and the Korean Peninsula, and up the Yellow Sea, were all things that were likely much easier to navigate with the vessels available at the time, but that doesn't mean that it was safe. Later, we see a different type of vessel appear: .  This is a built vessel, made of multiple hewn pieces of wood.  The examples that we see show a rather square front and back that rise up, sometimes dramatically, .  There are with various protrusions on either side. We see examples of this shape , and we've seen examples in haniwa from about the 6th century, and we have some corresponding wooden pieces found around the Korean peninsula that pretty closely match the haniwa boat shapesuggest similar boats were in use there as well, .  Nnot surprising given the cultural connections.  These boats do not show examples of sails, and were likely crewed by rowers.  Descriptions of some suggest that they might be adorned with branches, jewels, mirrors, and other such things for formal occasions to identify some boats as special -- , and we even have one record of the rowers in ceremonial garb with deer antlers.  But none of this suggests more than one basic boat typevery different types of boats. In the areas of the Yellow and Yangzi rivers, area of modern China, particularly in the modern PRC, the boats we see are a little different.  They tend to be flat bottomed boats, possible evolved from  which appear to have been designed from rafts or similar .   These vessels would have evolved out of those used to transport goods and people up and down the Yellow and Yangzi rivers and their tributaries.  These boats y had developed sails, but still the boats wwere n'ot necessarily the most stable on the open ocean.  Larger boats could perhaps make their way through some of the waves, and were no doubt used throughout the Yellow Sea and similar regions.  However, for going farther abroad, we are told thatcourt chronicles note that there were other boats that were preferred: . These are sometimes called  the Kun'lun-po, or Boats of the Kunlun, or the Boats of the Dark-skinned people.  A quick dive here into how this name came to be. Originally, “Kunlun” appears to refer to a mythical mountain range, the Kunlun-shan, which may have originated in the Shan-hai-jing, the Classic of Mountains and Seas, and so may not have referred to anything specific terrestrial mountain range, ally.  Italthough the term would later attach be used to describe to the mountain chain that forms the northern edge of the Tibetan plateau, on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin. However, at some point, it seems that “Kunlun” came to refer to people -- .  Sspecifically, it came to refer to people of dark complexion, with curly hair.  There are Tang era depictions of such people, but their origin is not exactly known: it might .  It is thought that it may have have equally referred to dark-skinned individuals of African descent, or possibly referring to some of the dark-skinned people who lived in the southern seas—people like the Andamanese living on the islands west of modern Thailand or some of the people of the Malay peninsula, for example. It is these latter groups that likely were the origin, then, of the “Kun'lun-po”, referring to the ships of the south, such as those of Malay and AsutronesianAustronesian origin.  We know that from the period of at least the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and even into the early Tang, these foreign ships often , which were often plyingied the waters from trade port to trade port, and were the preferred sailing vessels for voyages to the south, where the waters could be more treacherous.  Indeed, the Malay language eventually gives us the term of their vessels as “Djong”, a term that eventually made its way into Portuguese as “Junco” and thus into English as “junk”, though this terms has since been rather broadly applied to different “Asian” style sailing vessels. So that leaves us with three ship types that the Yamato court could have been using to send these embassies back and forth to the continent: .  Were they still using their own style of native boat as seen on haniwa,, or were they adopting continental boats to their needs?   If so, were they using the flat-bottomed boats of the Tang dynasty, or the more seaworthy vessels of the foreign merchants?. Which were they using?  The general thinking is that IMost depictions I have seen of the kentoushi, the Japanese embassies to the Tang court, depict them as t is generally thought that they were probably using the more continental-style flat-bottomed, riverine vessels.  After all, they were copying so much of what the Sui and Tang courts were doing, why would they not consider these ships to likewise be superior to their own?  At least for diplomatic purposes.  I suspect that local fishermen did their own were keeping their own counsel as far as ships are concernedthing, and I also have to wonder about what got used they were using from a military standpoint for military purposes.  Certainly we see the Tang style boats used in later centuries, suggesting that these had been adopted at some earlier point, possibly by the 650s or earlier. Whatever they used, and while long-distance sailing vessels could Sailing vessels could be larger than short-distance riverine craft, this was not a luxury cruise.  , but conditions on board were not necessarily a luxury cruise.  From later accounts we know that they would really pack people into these shipspeople could be packed in.  It should be noted that individual beds and bedrooms were a luxury in much of the world, and many people probably had little more than a mat to sleep on.  Furthermore, people could be packed in tight.   Think of the size of some of these embassies, which are said to be 80 to 150 people in size.  A long, overseas journey likely meant getting quite cozy with your neighbors on the voyage.  So how much more so with a camel and two donkeys on board a vessel that was likely never meant to carry them?  Not exactly the most pleasant experience, I imagine – and this is not really any different than European sailing vessels during the later age of exploration.. So, from the records for just the first few years of Takara-hime's second reign, we see that there are lots of people going back and forth, and we have a sense of how they might be getting to and from the continent and peninsula.  Let's dive into Next, we are going to talk about one of the most heavily documented embassies to the Tang court, which set out in the 7th month of the year 659.  Not only do we get a pretty detailed account of this embassy, but we even know who wrote the account: as in our imagined intro, , as this is one of the accounts by the famous Iki no Muraji no Hakatoko, transcribed by Aston as “Yuki” no Muraji. Iki no Hakatoko's name first appears in an entry for 654, where he is quoted as giving information about the status of some of the previous embassies to the Tang court.  Thereafter, various entries are labeled as “Iki no Muraji no Hakatoko says:”, which   This would seem to indicate that these particular entries came are taken directly from another work written by Iki no Hakatoko and referred to as the “Iki Hakatoko Sho”.  Based on the quoted fragments found in the Nihon Shoki, itthis appears to be one of ourthis oldest Japanese travelogues.  It , and spends considerable time on the mission of 659, of which it would appear that Iki no Hakatoko was himself a member, though not a ranking one.  Later, Iki no Hakatoko would find himself mentioned in the Nihon Shoki directly, and he would even be an ambassador, himself. The embassy of 659 itself, as we shall see, was rather momentous.  Although it started easily enough, the embassy would be caught up in some of the most impactful events that would take place between the Tang, Yamato, and the states of the Korean peninsula. This embassy was formally under the command of Sakahibe no Muraji no Iwashiki and Tsumori no Muraji no Kiza.  It's possible In the first instance it is not clear to me if this isthat he is the same person as the previously mentioned associate envoy, Sakahibe no Iwasuki—but the kanji are different enough, and there is another Sakahibe no Kusuri who shows up between the two in the record.  However, they are both listed as envoys during the reign of Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tennou, and as we've abundantly seen, and it wouldn't be the first time that scribal error crept in. has taken place, especially if the Chroniclers were pulling from different sources. The ambassadors took a retinue with them, including members of the northern Emishi, whom they were bringing along with them to show to the Tang court.  TheThey also  embassy ttook two ships—perhaps because of the size of the retinue, but I suspect that this was also because if anything happened to the one, you still had the other.  A kind of backup plan due to the likelihood something went wrong.  And wouldn't you know it, something did go wrong.  You see, things started out fine, departing Mitsu Bay, in Naniwa, on the 3rd day of the 7th month.  They sailed through the Seto Inland Sea and stopped at Tsukushi, likely for one last resupply and to check in with the Dazai, located near modern Fukuoka, who would have been in charge of overseeing ships coming and going to the archipelago.  They departed from Ohotsu bay in Tsukushi on the 11th day of the 8th month. A quick note: Sspeedboats these were not.  Today, one can cross from Fukuoka to Busan, on the southeast corner of the Korean peninsula, in less than a day.  The envoys, however, were taking their time.  They may have even stopped at the islands of Iki and Tsushima on their way.  By the 13th day of the 9th month—over a month from leaving Kyushu behind -- , the  ships finally came to an island along the southern border of Yamato's ally, Baekje.  Hakatoko does not recall the name of the island, but o On the following morning, around 4 AM, so just before sunrise, the two ships put out to sea together to cross the ocean, heading south, towards the mouth of the Yangzi river.  Unfortunately, the following day, the ship Iwashiki was on met with a contrary wind, and was driven away from the other ship – with nothing known of its fate until some time afterwards.  Meanwhile, the other ship, under the command of Tsumori no Muraji no Kiza, continued on and by midnight on the 16th day, it arrived at Mt. Xuan near Kuaiji Commandary in the Yue district, in modern Zhejiang.  Suddenly a violent northeast wind blew up, and p.  Tthey were saileding another 7 days before they finally arrived at Yuyao.  Today, this is part of the city of Ningbo, at the mouth of the Qiantang river, south of Shanghai and considered a part of the Yangzi Delta Region.  This area has been inhabited since at least 6300 years ago, and it has long been a trade port, especially with the creation of the Grand Canal connecting between the Yangzi and the Yellow River, which would have allowed transshipment of goods to both regions. The now half-size Yamato contingenty  left their ship at Yuyao and disembarked, and made their way to Yuezhou, the capital of the Kuaiji Commandary.  This took them a bit of time—a little over a month.  Presumably this was because of paperwork and logistics: they probably because they had to send word ahead, and I suspect they had to inventory everything they brought and negotiate carts and transportationfigure out transportation., since   Tthey didn't exactly have bags of holding to stuff it all in, so they probably needed to negotiate carts and transportation.  The finally made it to Yuezhou on the first day of the 11th intercalary month.  An “intercalary” month refers to an extra month in a year.  It was determined by various calculations and was added to keep the lunar and solar years in relative synch. From Yuezhou, things went a bit more quickly, as they were placed on post-horses up to the Eastern Capital, or Luoyang, where the Emperor Tang Gaozong was in residence.   The Tang kept a capital at Luoyang and another to the west, in Chang'an.  The trip to Luoyang was long—over 1,000 kilometers, or 1 megameter, as it were.  The trip first took them through the Southern Capital, meaning the area of modern Nanjing, which they entered on the 15th day of the month.  They then continued onwards, reaching Luoyang on the 29th day of the 11th month.  The following day, on the 30th day of the 11th intercalary month of the year 659, the Yamato envoys were granted an audience with Emperor Tang Gaozong.  As was proper, he inquired about the health of their sovereign, Takara Hime, and the envoys reported that she was doing well.  He asked other questions about how the officials were doing and whether there was peace in Yamato.  The envoys all responded affirmatively, assuring him that Yamato was at peace. Tang Gaozong also asked about the Emishi they had brought with them.  We mentioned this event previously, back in Episode XXX117 , how the Emishi had been shown to the Tang Emperor, and how they had described them for him.  This is actually one of the earliest accounts that we have describing the Emishi from the Yamato point of view, rather than just naming them—presumably because everyone in Yamato already knew who they were.  From a diplomatic perspective, of course, this was no doubt Yamato demonstrating how they were, in many ways, an Empire, similar to the Tang, with their own subordinate ethnicities and “barbarians”. After answering all of the emperor's questions, the audience was concluded.  The following day, however, was something of its own. This was the first day of the regular 11th lunar month, and it also was the celebration of the Winter Solstice—so though it was the 11th month, it may have been about 22 December according to our modern western calendars.  The envoys once again met with the emperor, and they were treated as distinguished guests—at least according to their own records of it.  Unfortunately, during the festivities, it seems that a fire broke out, creating some confusion, and .  Tthe matters of the diplomatic mission were put on hold while all of that went on. We don't know exactly what happened in the ensuing month.  Presumably the envoys took in the sites of the city, may have visited various monasteries, and likely got to know the movers and shakers in the court, who likely would have wined and dined them, inviting them to various gatherings, as since they brought their own exotic culture and experiences to the Tang court. Unfortunately, things apparently turned sour.  First off, it seems clear that the members of this embassyy weren't the only Japanese in the court.  There may have been various merchants, of course, but and we definitely know that there were students who had come on other missions and were still there likely still studying, such as those who had been learning from studying with Master Xuanzang, whose journeys we mentioned in the last several episodes.  But Wwe are given a very specific name of a troublemaker, however:  Kawachi no Aya no Ohomaro, and we are told that he was aa servant of Han Chihung, who .  Han Chihung, himself, is thought to have possiblymay have been of mixed ethnicity—both Japanese and ethnic Han, and may .  Hhe may have traveled to the Tang court on or around 653. , based on some of the records, but it isn't entirely clear. For whatever reason, on the 3rd day of the 12th month of the year 659, Kawachi no Aya no Ohomaro slandered the envoys, and although .  Wwe don't know exactly what he said, but the Tang court caught wind of the accusations and found the envoys guilty.  They were condemned to banishment, until the author of our tale, none other than Iki no Hakatoko himself, stepped up, .  He made representation to the Emperor, pleading against the slander.  , and tThe punishment was remitted, .  Sso they were no longer banished.  However, they were also then told that they could no't return home.  You see, the Tang court was in the middle of some sensitive military operations in the lands east of the sea—in other words they were working with Silla to and invadeing the Kingdom of Baekje.  Since Yamato was an ally of Baekje, it would be inconvenient if the envoys were to return home and rally Yamato to Baekje's defense. And so the entire Yamato embassy was moved to the Western Capital, Chang'an, where they were placed under individual house arrest.  They no doubt were treated well, but they were not allowed to leave, and .  Tthey ended up spending the next year in this state. of house arrest. Unfortunately, we don't have a record of just how they passed their time in Chang'an.  They likely studied, and were probably visited by nobles and others.  They weren't allowed to leave, but they weren't exactly thrown in jail, either.  After all, they were foreign emissaries, and though the Tang might be at war with their ally, there was no formal declaration of war with Yamato, as far as I can make out.  And so the embassy just sat there, for about 9 months. Finally, in the 7th month of 660, the records tell us we are told thatthat tThe Tang and Silla forces had been successful: .  Baekje was destroyed..  The Tang and Silla forces had been successful.   News must have reached Chang'an a month later, as Iki Hakatoko writes that this occurred in the 8th month of the year 660.  With the Tang special military operation on the Korean peninsula concluded, they released the envoys and allowed them to return to their own countries.  They envoys began their preparations as of the 12th day of the 9th month, no doubt eager to return home, and left were leaving Chang'an a week later, on the 19th day of the 9th month.  From there, it took them almost a month to reach Luoyang, arriving on the 16th day of the 10th month, and here they were greeted with more good news, for here it was that they met up once again with those members of their delegation who had been blown off course. As you may remember, the ship carrying Iwashiki was blown off-course on the 15th day of the 9th month in the year 659, shortly after setting out from the Korean peninsula.  The two ships had lost contact and Tsumori no Muraji no Kiza and his ship had been the one that had continued on.   Iwashiki and those with him, however, found themselves at the mercy of the contrary winds and eventually came ashore at an island in the Southern Sea, which Aston translates as “Erh-kia-wei”.   There appears to be at least some suggestion that this was an island in the Ryukyuan chain, possibly the island of Kikai.  There, local islanders, none too happy about these foreigners crashing into their beach, destroyed the ship, and presumably attacked the embassy.  Several members, including Yamato no Aya no Wosa no Atahe no Arima (yeah, that *is* a mouthful), Sakahibe no Muraji no Inadzumi (perhaps a relative of Iwashiki) and others all stole a local ship and made their way off the island.  They eventually made landfall at a Kuazhou, southeast of Lishui City in modern Zhejiang province, where they met with local officials of the Tang government, who then sent them under escort to the capital at Luoyang.  Once there, they were probably held in a similar state of house arrest, due to the invasion of Baekje, but they met back up with Kiza and Hakatoko's party. The envoys, now reunited, hung out in Luoyang for a bit longer, and thus .  Thus it was on the first day of the 11th month of 660 that they witnessed war captives being brought to the capital.  This included 13 royal persons of Baekje, from the King on down to the Crown Prince and various nobles, including the PRimiePrime Minister, as well as 37 other persons of lower rank—50 people all told.  TheThese captives y were delivered up to the Tang government and led before the emperor.  Of course, with the war concluded, and Baekje no longer a functioning state, while he could have had them executed, Tang Gaozong instead released them, demonstrating a certain amount of magnanimity.  The Yamato envoys remained in Luoyang for most of the month.  On the 19th, they had another audience with the emperor, who bestowed on them various gifts and presents, and then five days later they departed the Luoyang, and began the trek back to the archipelago in earnest. By the 25th day of the first month of 661, the envoys arrived back at Yuezhou, head of the Kuaiji Commandery.  They stayed there for another couple of months, possibly waiting for the right time, as crossing the sea at in the wrong season could be disastrous.  They finally departed east from Yuezhou on the first day of the fourth month, coming to .  They came to Mt. Cheng-an 6 days later, on the 7th, and set out to sea first thing in the morning on the 8th.  They had a southwest wind initially in their favor, but they lost their way in the open ocean, an all too commonall-too-common problem without modern navigational aids.  Fortunately, the favorable winds had carried them far enough that only a day later they made landfall on the island of Tamna, aka Jeju island. Jeju island was, at this point, its own independent kingdom, situated off the southern coast of the Korean peninsula.  Dr. Alexander Vovin suggested that the name “Tamna” may have been a corruption of a Japonic or proto-Japonic name: Tanimura.  The island was apparently quite strange to the Yamato embassy, and they met with various residents natives of Jeju island.  They, even convincinged Prince Aphaki and eight other men of the island to come with them to be presented at the Yamato court. The rest of their journey took a little over a month.  They finally arrived back in Yamato on the 23rd day of the fifth month of 661.  They had been gone for approximately two years, and a lot had changed, especially with the destruction of Baekje.  The Yamato court had already learned of what had happened and was in the process of drawing up plans for an expedition back to the Korean peninsula to restore the Baekje kingdom, and pPrince Naka no Oe himself was set to lead the troops. The icing on the cake was: Tthe reception that the envoys received upon their return was rather cold.  Apparently they were had been slandered to the Yamato court by another follower of Han Chihung—Yamato no Aya no Atahe no Tarushima—and so they weren't met with any fanfare.  We still don't know what it was that Tarsuhima was saying—possibly he had gotten letters from Chihung or Ohomaro and was simply repeating what they had said. Either way, the envoys were sick of it.  They had traveled all the way to the Tang capitals, they had been placed under house arrest for a year, and now they had returned.  They not only had gifts from the Tang emperor, but they were also bringing the first ever embassy from the Kingdom of Tamna along with them.  The slander would not stand.  And so they did what anyone would do at the time:  They apparently appealed to the Kami.  We are told that their anger reached to the Gods of the High Heaven, which is to say the kami of Takamanohara, who killed Tarushima with a thunderbolt.  Which I guess was one way to shut him up. From what we can tell, the embassy was eventually considered a success.  Iki no Hakatoko's star would rise—and fall—and rise again in the court circles.  As I noted, his account of this embassy is really one of the best and most in depth that we have from this time.  It lets us see the relative route that the envoys were taking—the Chronicles in particular note that they traveled to the Great Tang of Wu, and, sure enough, they had set out along the southern route to the old Wu capital, rather than trying to cross the Bohai Sea and make landfall by the Shandong peninsula or at the mouth of the Yellow River.  From there they traveled through Nanjing—the southern “capital” likely referring, in this instance, to the old Wu capital—and then to Luoyang.  Though they stayed there much longer than they had anticipated, they ended up living there through some of the most impactful events that occurred during this point in Northeast Asia.  they And that is something we will touch on next episode.  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

Mokslininkai ištyrė, kad bemiegės naktys žmones verčia laikytis didesnio socialinio atstumo ir net gali padidinti vienišumo jausmą. Plačiau apie tai naujame „Miego DNR“ epizode.Seime - siūlymas ilginti istorinių automobilių amžių. Iki šiol tokį statusą galėjo turėti automobiliai pagaminti prieš 30 metų, dabar siūloma padidinti iki 40ies. Vieni tam pritaria, kiti prieštarauja, esą reikia labiau kreipti dėmesį ne į amžių, o į istorinę vertę.Mokytojų trūkumas kasmet sukelia vis daugiau iššūkių. Vilnius ne išimtis - šiuo metu vidutinis pedagogų amžius siekia 50,5 metų. Savivaldybė kviečia pasinaudoti nemokama programa „Pradedu mokyti Vilniuje“.Mokslininkai teigia, kad vidutinis pasaulinis CO2 padidėjimas 2024 metais yra rekordinis. Kokios to padidėjimo priežastys?Vaikų teisių specialistai atkreipia dėmesį, kad tobulėjant dirbtinio intelekto įrankiams, vis didesnė grėsmė kyla vaikų saugumui. Pavojaus varpais skambina ir pedagogai. Jų teigimu, vaikai nebenori spręsti užduočių, patys priimti sprendimų ar kurti, dažniau renkasi viską patikėti dirbtiniam intelektui.Ved.Darius Matas

Renata Kilinskaitė dirba žygių koordinatore Lietuvos neformalaus švietimo agentūroje, yra sukūrusi ne vieną maršrutą žygiams pėščiomis, o laisvalaikiu keliauja po Lietuvą ir fotografuoja gamtą.Per saugomas teritorijas keliauja jos fotografijų paroda „Klajonės po pelkes“. Joje įamžintos Baltijos šalių pelkės įvairiais metų laikais ir skirtingu paros metu. Iki daugumos pelkių fotografė keliavo dviračiu, o tam, kad įamžintų pelkę saulei tekant, apgaubtą paryčio rūkų, nakvojo apžvalgos bokšteliuose.Autorė Inga Janiulytė-TemporinRenatos Kilinskaitės nuotraukoje - Dunikos pelkė Latvijoje

Europos lyderiai bando įtikinti Donaldą Trampą neskaldyti sąjungininkų bei nenusigręžti nuo Ukrainos. Po susitikimo su britų premjeru Kiru Starmeriu Jungtinių Valstijų prezidentas sako, kad taikos susitarimo vilkinti nevalia - pasak Trampo, Putinas tikrai laikysis duoto žodžio, bet pats amerikiečių taikdarių siųsti neketina. Šiandien Ukrainos prezidentas Volodymyras Zelenskis Vašingtone turėtų pasirašyti sutartį, pagal kurią Jungtinėms Amerikos Valstijos suteiks teisę į gamtos resursus UkrainojePrasideda antroji jubiliejinėje 25-osios Vilniaus knygų mugės diena. Klausimas klausytojams - ar lankotės knygų mugėje? Ar keliaujate ten knygų, ar į renginius?Nuo rytojaus nebus galima prisiskambinti, jeigu telefono numeris prasideda skaičiumi 8. Jis turi būti pakeistas į +370 arba tiesiog 0. Vis tik daugybė žmonių ar įmonių numerių dar nesusitvarkė, o tie, kurie numerių pakeitimui naudoja specialias programėles, raginami jas rinktis atidžiai, kad nebūtų pasisavinti duomenys.Iki kitų metų sausio greitosios medicinos pagalbos tarnyboje turi nelikti vairuotojų. Sveikatos apsaugos ministerija siekia, kad vairuojantys greitosios pagalbos automobilius turėtų ir paramediko kvalifikaciją. Pusantro šimto vairuotojų turės apsispręsti, ar išeiti iš darbo, ar eiti mokytis.Palangos sporto centras vaikus sportuoti kvietė neturėdamas higienos paso. Centro atstovai aiškina, kad veikė legaliai ir dokumentus turėjo, o pažeidimai nustatyti supainiojus sąvokas. Visgi po specialistų patikrinimo Sporto centras suskubo juos taisyti - pateikė paraiškas higienos pasams gauti.Ved. Rūta Kupetytė

Tęsiantis akcijai „Radarom“, LRT žurnalistė Gerūta Griniūtė kviečia geriau pažinti Ukrainos kultūrą ir aktyviau aukoti.Vilniaus toliau kviečia senjorus laikinai globoti šunis ir kates – tuos gyvūnus, kurie jau seni, suluošinti ir vargiai rastų, kas juos priglaustų. Akcijos „Senjoras senjorui“ sumanytojai senjorų prašo tik dėmesio augintiniams, nes visu kitu – veterinarų priežiūra, ėdalu, kraiku – pasirūpinta. Kaip Jūs vertinate tokią akciją?Iki šiol mirti galėjo tik žmonės ir bitės, o visi kiti gyvi organizmai – arba nugaišti, arba kristi. Bet kalbininkai, gavę LRT RADIJO laidos „Sugyvenimai“ autorių klausimą, ar tikrai gyvūnai negali mirti, nusprendė, kad jie gali mirti. Taigi nuo šiol mirti gali ne tik žmogus ir bitės, bet ir žmogaus mylimas augintinis, pvz., šuo, katė, žiurkėnas. Kaip jūs vertinate tokį kalbininkų sprendimą?Kokios nuotaikos gėlių turgeliuose šią Valentino dieną, kokiems pirkėjų srautams nusiteikusios didžiosios parduotuvės?Kuo ypatingas Valstybėsatkūrimo dienos minėjimas Kuonio šile?Ved. Edvardas Kubilius

Prezidentas sako, kad „Nemuno aušros“ pirmininkas Remigijus Žemaitaitis savo pasisakymais apie Ukrainą bei Lietuvos saugumą diskredituoja Lietuvą. Vertindamas pastaruosius politiko pareiškimus, Gitanas Nausėda „Verslo žinių“ tinklalaidei teigia, kad Žemaitaitis tampa panašus į prorusiškomis pažiūromis pasižymėjusį Eduardą Vaitkų .Prieš daugiau nei metus nušovęs ligotą moterį policijos pareigūnas Darius Šerpytis nepiktnaudžiavo tarnyba ir neviršijo įgaliojimų. Griebtis ginklo buvo būtina, nustatė Vilniaus apygardos teismas. Pareigūnų bendruomenė šį sprendimą sveikina, tačiau yra ir abejojančių, ar dabar pareigūnai ginklo prieš pažeidžiamus asmenis nenaudos dažniau.Europos Sąjungoje pasigirsta kalbų, kad taikos derybose dėl karo Ukrainoje būtų galima kalbėti ir apie rusiškų dujų pirkimą. Financial Times skelbia, kad tai svarsto keli aukšti Europos Sąjungos pareigūnai. Be to, pastebima, kad laivais rusiškos dujos ir dabar pasiekia Europą.Penkeri metai nuo Jungtinės Karalystės pasitraukimo iš Europos Sąjungos. Daugybės skambių pažadų lydėtas procesas suskaldė šalį, tačiau visuomenė pradeda pamažu gyti. Dauguma pažadų atsimušė į realybę, o leiboristų vyriausybė į valdžią atėjo žadėdami peržiūrėti šį procesą ir gerinti santykius su Europa.Iki šių metų sausio pabaigos visi su vaikais dirbti planuojantys asmenis privalėjo išsiimti specialų brūkšninį kodą, rodantį, kad asmuo nėra teistas už lytinius ir sunkius tyčinius nusikaltimus. Tokia tvarka siekiama apsaugoti nepilnamečius nuo galimo fizinio ar seksualinio smurto mokyklose ar kitose įstaigose. Švietimo bendruomenė darbuotojus jau pradėjo tikrinti, tačiau griežtesnių kontrolės priemonių efektyvumų abejoja kai kurie teisininkai.Joniškio valdžia antrus metus vargsta ieškodama savivaldybės kontrolieriaus. Nuo praėjusio spalio Kontrolės ir audito tarnyboje nėra nė vieno darbuotojo, todėl stringa darbas tiek pačiai savivaldybei, tiek vadinamąjį „čekiukų“ tyrimą atliekančiai teisėsaugai.Ved. Liepa Želnienė

Keturių milijonų rubrikoje pokalbis su Jungtiniuose Arabų Emyratuose gyvenančia Laura Kornelija Inamedinova. Dar dvidešimties rinkodaros agentūrą įkūrusi lietuvė dirba su sėkmingiausiais verslininkais, o savo istorija ir patarimais dalijasi tarptautinėse konferencijose.Po pusės vienuoliktos žinių apie telefono numerių kodų pokyčius. Iki kada galėsime prisiskambinti su senuoju kodu 86? Kaip paprastai pakeisti daug numerių savo telefonuose? Ir apskritai kodėl reikia keisti telefonų numerių kodus?Antrą laidos valandą pokalbis apie pagalbą metant rūkyti. Jau beveik metus veikia pagalbos metant rūkyti linija. Išsiaiškinsime, kaip ji veikia, kiek skambučių sulaukia ir kokią pagalbą galima gauti. O Jūs savo klausimus galite užduoti paskambinę arba parašę elektroninį laišką.Vilniuje gyvenanti Giedrė Radzevičiūtė išsaugojo šimtametę senelių sodybą atokiame Šimaičių kaime Ukmergės rajone. Jau šešiolikti metai protėvių žemėse moteris pati augina daugybę vaistinių augalų, renka juos apylinkėse, kuria arbatas, rengia edukacijas ir savo svečius kviečia kuo ilgiau būti gamtoje.Ved. Urtė Korsakovaitė

Daugiau negu pusė savo šventinio stalo biudžetą skaičiuojančių gyventojų šiemet planuoja išleisti nuo 100 iki 250 eurų. Tačiau vis daugiau žmonių ketina šventinio stalo ruoša pasidalinti ir tokiu būdu sutaupyti.LRT kartu su „Vaikų linija“ ir „Jaunimolinija“ skatina tarpusavyje dalintis ir kasdienėmis, ir pačiomis sudėtingiausiomis temomis, netgi tada, kai trūksta žodžių, nepamirštant, kad mūsų dėmesys vienas kitam išreiškiamas ne vien žodžiais, bet ir bendru patylėjimu, vienas kito matymu, buvimu kartu.Pastaruoju metu atgimsta tradicija, kūčiukus ne pirkti, o kepti namuose. Tiesa pastebima ir kita tendencija, kad dalis žmonių kaip tik nebegamina patiekalų namuose ir juos Kūčioms užsisako tiesiog restoranuose. Kaip elgiatės jūs? Kūčiukus kepate patys, ar perkate parduotuvėje? – klausimas klausytojams.Per šventes vagysčių skaičius ženkliai išauga, todėl pareigūnai ragina gyventojus išlikti budriais. Iki pat Naujųjų bus sustiprina ir vairuotojų blaivumo kontrolė. Laukia tikrai ilgas švenčių laikotarpis. Kaip per jį jaustis ramiai tiek kelyje, tiek paliekant namus, keliaujant į svečius?Į LRT girdi kreipėsi avalynės parduotuvę Šilalėje turinti Diana. Verslininkė sako patirianti vis daugiau nuostolių, nes dalis pirkėjų piktnaudžiauja – besibaigiant garantiniam laikotarpiui atneša sugadintus batus ir reikalauja grąžinti pinigus. Vartotojų teises ginanti institucija sako, kad pirkėjai ne visuomet teisūs, o verslininkai turi pakankamai galimybių apsiginti nuo sukčiaujančiųpirkėjų.Ved. Rūta Kupetytė

Prezidentui Gitanui Nausėdai susitikus su kandidatu į užsienio reikalų ministrus, savo patarėju Kęstučiu Budriu, šalies vadovo atstovas sako, kad iš būsimojo ministro tikimasi, jog jis didins „Lietuvos saugumą ir diplomatinį nuspėjamumą“.Apie dvi dešimtys Lietuvoje reziduojančių baltarusių opozicijos atstovų Vilniuje piketavo prie Europos Komisijos atstovybės siekdami atkreipti pasaulio dėmesį į tautiečių padėtį.Lietuvos bankas „už šiurkščius ir sistemingus“ pažeidimus panaikino teisėsaugos akiratyje atsidūrusios finansinių technologijų bendrovės „Foxpay“ licenciją. Pasak banko, licencija bendrovei panaikinta, nes ji nesilaikė pinigų plovimo ir teroristų finansavimo prevencijos reikalavimų, tinkamai nenustatė klientų ir jų atstovų tapatybės.Iki sausio pirmosios didieji miestai ir kurortai turi nustatyti mažos taršos zonas. Kauno senamiestyje tokia zona, pro kurią pravažiavus reikia mokėti rinkliavą, įvesta nuo rugpjūčio. Vilniuje mažos taršos zoną ruošiamasi įvesti iki metų pabaigos, tačiau sostinės valdininkai apmokestinti įvažiavimo į senamiestį neskuba - teigia, kad to kol kas neleidžia įstatymai.Ved. Agnė Skamarakaitė

Vyriausybė šią savaitę pritarė siūlymui tarptautiniam Vilniaus oro uostui laikinai suteikti papildomą M.K.Čiurlionio vardą. Toks simbolinis oro uosto pavadinimo pokytis galios nuo 2025 m. pradžios iki 2029 m. pabaigos. Ar Čiurlionio vardo suteikimas oro uostui keleiviams padės geriau pažinti ir Čiurlionio kūrybą, ar pavadinimas liks tik pavadinimu?Išrinktasis premjeras G.Paluckas po susitikimo su Prezidentu viešai įvardijo kai kurių kandidatų į ministrus pavardes. Kaip jūs vertinate kandidatus į premjerus?Klaipėdos Liudviko Stulpino mokykloje šią savaitę į mokyklą atėjus kaukėtam vyrui ir liepus vaikams persirengimo kambaryje atiduoti telefonus, kilo diskusija, ar mokyklos turėtų būti rakinamos. Tiesa, jau dabar mokyklose egzistuoja skirtingos patirtys – vienos rakinamos, kitur galima patekti tik su elektroniniu pažymėjimu.Iki 2025 m. sausio 1-osios didieji miestai ir kurortai turi nustatyti mažos taršos zonas. Kauno senamiestyje tokia zona, pro kurią pravažiavus reikia mokėti rinkliavą, įvesta nuo rugpjūčio. Vilniuje mažos taršos zoną ruošiamasi įvesti iki metų pabaigos, tačiau sostinės valdininkai apmokestinti įvažiavimo į senamiestį neskuba - teigia, kad to kol kas neleidžia įstatymai.Ved. Rūta Kupetytė

Lietuvoje vis dažniau pasigirsta žinių apie masinius atleidimus. Kaip tai paaiškinti – kokios to priežastys ir kokias masiniai atleidimai gali turėti pasekmes ekonomikai ir mums visiems?Šiomis dienomis, kai lankome artimųjų kapus, prisimename gražiausiais praleistas akimirkas su tais, kurių jau nebėra tarpo mūsų – į kapines galima pažvelgti dar ir kitaip, juk kapinės pasakoja istoriją - gidai ir kviečia ja domėtis.Rubrika ,,Auga ir balkone“ šeštadienio rytais tęsiasi ir lapkričio mėnesį. Šio ryto pašnekovė interjero ir eksterjero architektė Gitana Valavičiūtė turi savitą požiūrį į sodininkavimą balkone ir skatina žmones nesusitelkti vien į daržovių auginimą.Mokslininkai pranešė pirmąkart aptikę gyvūniją po Ramiojo vandenyno dugnu esančiose versmėse. Iki šiol manyta, kad čia gali išgyventi tik virusai ir mikrobai, tačiau naujas tyrimas atskleidė daugiau informacijos apie sudėtingas vandenyno gelmėse esančias buveines.Kiekvienais metais JAV esanti Arizonos dykuma pasiglemžia šimtus migrantų. Nelegaliai iš Meksikos į Ameriką bandantys patekti migrantai dėl visą vasarą besilaikančios 50 laipsnių temperatūros neretai miršta vienoje didžiausių ir karščiausių dykumų Šiaurės Amerikoje. Migrantams gelbėti bando savanoriai.Karybos ekspertai teigia, kad dalis šaukiamojo amžiaus jaunuolių vengia atlikti privalomąją karo tarnybą, naudojasi įvairiais būdais jos išvengti.Ved. Gabija Narušytė

Iki galutinio Lietuvos ir kitų Baltijos šalių galutinės sinchronizacijos su Europos elektros tinklais lieka lygiai šimtas dienų. Sinchronizacija bus paskutinis žingsnis į Lietuvos energetinę Nepriklausomybę. Ką tai reiškia Lietuvai ir kitoms Baltijos šalims?Socialdemokratų partijos lyderė Vilija Blinkevičiūtė atsisakė premjerės pareigų. Į šias pareigas pasiūlytas Gintautas Paluckas. Tokį sprendimą partijos lyderė pranešė vakar, po partijos prezidiumo posėdžio. Savo sprendimą nesiekti premjero posto Vilija Blinkevičiūtė aiškina savo amžiumi, tačiau atsisakyti europarlamentarės pareigų neketina.Potvyniai Valensijoje. Kaip tvarkytis su padariniais?

Mokslininkai pranešė pirmąkart aptikę gyvūniją po Ramiojo vandenyno dugnu esančiose versmėse. Iki šiol manyta, kad čia gali išgyventi tik virusai ir mikrobai, tačiau naujas tyrimas atskleidė daugiau informacijos apie sudėtingas vandenyno gelmėse esančias buveines.Sakartvele šiandien vyksta Parlamento rinkimai, į kuriuos krypsta visos Europos akys. Apklausos rodo, kad proeuropietiškos jėgos rinkimuose gali laimėti pakankamai balsų, kad sudarytų koaliciją ir pakeistų dabartinę prorusišką vyriausybę.Rubrikoje ,,Auga ir balkone“ - pažintis su fotografe Jurgita Venckiene iš Kauno, kuri jau 5 metus puoselėja sodą balkone. Senovinius meškinus kolekcionuojanti moteris daug dėmesio skiria detalėms, mėgsta įdomių ir retų daiktų ieškoti sendaikčių turguose.Valstybinė mokesčių inspekcija informuoja, kad privačios žemės savininkai jau gali peržiūrėti žemės mokesčio deklaracijas už 2024-uosius metus. Dauguma žemės savininkų informaciją apie mokestį netrukus gaus arba jau gavo ir elektroniniu paštu. Tačiau pastaruoju metu itin aktyviai siaučiant sukčiams, kurie išvilioja milžiniškas pinigų sumas iš patiklių gyventojų, dalis tautiečių į Valstybinės mokesčių inspekcijos atsiųstus pranešimus žiūri nepatikliai ir baiminasi, jog paspaudę laiške esančias nuorodas gali tapti sukčių aukomis.Ateinančią naktį Lietuvoje bus pereinama prie žiemos laiko – laikas persukamas vieną valandą atgal. Pastebima, kad pakitus biologiniam ritmui, sutrinka žmogaus hormonų veikla ir visa endokrininė sistema, o ji reguliuoja viso organizmo veiklą - psichiką, emocijas, nuotaiką, lytinį gyvenimą.Ved. Paulius Selezniovas

Iki antro Seimo rinkimų turo likus dviem dienom, netikėtai traukiasi dalis rinkimų apygardų komisijų narių. Vyriausioji rinkimų komisija patenkino Deltuvos pietinės rinkimų apygardos komisijos pirmininkės ir dar kelių komisijos narių atsistatydinimo prašymus. Posto neteko ir Panevėžio meras.Šešių politinių partijų, turėsiančių frakcijas naujame Seime, lyderiai paskutinį kartą prieš antrąjį rinkimų turą susitiko Specialioje LRT radijo laidoje. Čia buvo aptartos galimybės suburti centro kairiųjų partijų koaliciją ir įvertinti pastaruoju metu garsiai skambėję nusutarimai tarp Sauliaus Skvernelio demokratų ir Ramūno Karbauskio valstiečių.Foxpay byloje suimtas Vilhelmas Germanas per susijusius asmenis Kauno termofikacijos elektrinėje įrengė kriptovaliutų kasimo serverius.Per pirmąsias pusantros savaitės gynybos obligacijos pritraukė investuotojų paraiškų už kiek daugiau nei 4is su puse milijono eurų. Abiejuose bankuose žmonės buvo aktyvesni ir skolino daugiau už verslą ir kitas organizacijas. Tuo metu gynybos fondui per daugiau nei tris savaites gyventojai paaukojo apie trisdešimt tūkstančių eurų. Ekonomistų vertinimu, ši suma yra maža ir rodo gana menką gyventojų norą prisidėti prie šalies gynybos stiprinimo.Ved. Liepa Želnienė

Iki pat didžiųjų debatų spalio 10 d. jūsų laukia debatai skirtingomis aktualiomis temomis. Tema – SVEIKATOS APSAUGA Debatuoja:Nacionalinis susivienijimas – Vytautas SinicaDemokratų sąjunga „Vardan Lietuvos“ – Rolanda LingienėLaisvės partija – Morgana DanielėLietuvos socialdemokratų partija – Saulius Čaplinskas Debatus moderuoja Rima Urbonaitė YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m04oUxuYyU

Iki pat didžiųjų debatų spalio 10 d. jūsų laukia debatai skirtingomis aktualiomis temomis Tema - TRANSPORTAS IR KELIAI Debatuoja: Tėvynės sąjunga-Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai - Andrius Kupčinskas; Liberalų sąjūdis - Simonas Gentvilas; Nemuno Aušra - Agnė Širinskienė; Lietuvos valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjunga - Valius Ąžuolas. Debatus moderuoja - Ignas Grinevičius YouTube: https://youtu.be/qNPAl8pZub0

Iki pat didžiųjų debatų spalio 10 d. jūsų laukia debatai skirtingomis aktualiomis temomis. Tema - ŠVIETIMAS Debatuoja: Demokratų sąjunga „Vardan Lietuvos“ - Vilija Targamadzė; Nemuno Aušra - Agnė Širinskienė; Liberalų sąjūdis - Simonas Kairys; Lietuvos žaliųjų partija - Inga Popovaitė. Debatus moderuoja - Andrius Tapinas YouTube: https://youtu.be/okyDl7QBEs8

Iki pat didžiųjų debatų spalio 10 d. jūsų laukia debatai skirtingomis aktualiomis temomis. Tema – ŽMOGAUS TEIISĖS Debatuoja: Laisvės Partija - Tomas Vytautas Raskevičius; Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija Tadas Vinokuras; Nacionalinis susivienijimas - Vytautas Sinica; Demokratų sąjunga „Vardan Lietuvos“ - Linas Kukuraitis. Debatus moderuoja - Rima Urbonaitė

Iki pat didžiųjų debatų spalio 10 d. jūsų laukia debatai skirtingomis aktualiomis temomis. Tema - SOCIALINĖ APSAUGA Debatuoja: Tėvynės sąjunga-Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai - Paulė Kuzmickienė; Nemuno Aušra - Agnė Širinskienė; Liberalų sąjūdis - Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen; Lietuvos valstiečių ir žaliųjų sąjunga - Rimantė Šalaševičiūtė. Debatus moderuoja - Ignas Grinevičius

Iki pat didžiųjų debatų spalio 10 d. jūsų laukia debatai skirtingomis aktualiomis temomis. Tema - KRAŠTO APSAUGA Debatuoja: Demokratų sąjunga „Vardan Lietuvos“ - Giedrimas Jeglinskas; Nemuno Aušra - Agnė Širinskienė; Liberalų sąjūdis - Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen; Lietuvos žaliųjų partija - Laurynas Okockis. Debatus moderuoja - Andrius Tapinas

Pirmą kartą organizuojamuose „Gyvybės mokslų pažangos apdovanojimuose“ pagerbti didžiausią proveržį gyvybės mokslų sektoriuje parodę Lietuvos mokslininkai, startuoliai bei labiausiai pasižymėjusios įmonės. Už produktyvų įsitraukimą ir atstovavimą Lietuvos gyvybės mokslų ekosistemos interesams apdovanotas ir „Delta Bioscience“ atstovas Dominykas Milašius.Lietuvoje pirmą kartą startuoja programa „Rūpinamės sveikata – gydo ne tik vaistai“. Ji skirta gerinti ligonių ir jų artimųjų psichinę ir emocinę sveikatą, inicijuoti edukacines veiklas, įrengti poilsio kambarius gydymo įstaigose ir skatinti panašius projektus, padedančius kovoti su liga. Iki spalio 14 d. organizacijos kviečiamos teikti paraiškas dėl finansinės paramos savo projektų įgyvendinimui. Trims geriausiems projektams numatytas 15 tūkst. eur biudžetas, kurį skirs įmonė „Teva Baltics“.„Niekam nelinkiu tokio košmaro“ – taip Į LRT GIRDI rašo klausytoja, kuri teigia, kad negalėjo net maisto vaikams nupirkti, nes SODRA už esamus įsiskolinimus „įšaldė turimas sąskaitas“. Kokiais atvejais imamasi tokių veiksmų? Ar tikrai galiojanti tvarka yra adekvati?Kaip užtikrinti tvarumą biuruose? Viena komercinių patalpų valymo paslaugas teikiančių įmonių, šiuos metus pradėjo su nauja tvarumo iniciatyva ir ragina klientus atsisakyti po stalais laikomų šiukšliadėžių tam, kad skatintų šiukšlių rūšiavimą biuruose.Auksinio proto atranka.

Last time we spoke about the fall of Guam and actions in New Guinea. General Shepherd's Marines had secured the Orote Peninsula, while General Turnage's Marines pushed the Japanese northwards. General Bruce's 77th Division prepared for an eastward assault, and engineers attempted, but failed, to build a supply road to Yona. Geiger's offensive began on July 31, with Marines quickly capturing Agaña and advancing despite dense jungle and resistance. The 77th Division faced tough terrain but liberated 2,000 Guamanians. The push north continued, facing logistical challenges and mined roads. By August 7th, coordinated attacks cleared key areas, culminating in the defeat of remaining Japanese forces by August 11. Guam was back in American hands although scattered Japanese forces continued guerrilla warfare until the war's conclusion. Thus the Marianas campaign had finally come to a conclusion, and now the allies were adding more bass of operation to hit the Japanese home islands.  This episode is the Fall of Myitkyina Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  This week we are diving back over to the northern Burma front. Despite holding Myitkyina through a rainy, muddy summer-long siege, by late July, the Japanese had been gradually cornered into a small perimeter, cut off from all supply lines and running short on ammunition. The situation worsened due to a leadership crisis, between the two Japanese leaders was a matter of semantics. Colonel Maruyama of the 114th Regiment who was in charge of the defense of the city, interpreted his orders to “facilitate the future operations of 33rd Army ‘by securing the vital areas in the vicinity of Myitkyina',” as a call to defend the city street-by-street, house-by-house. When General Minakami of the 56th Division arrived, he pointed out that all Maruyama had to do to satisfy his orders was simply to continue to deny the Allies access to the Ledo-Kamaing road. Minakami thus found himself in a rather difficult position in regard to the command of the Myitkyina Garrison. Maruyama had conducted an excellent defense, was fully familiar with the situation and, because of his position as former commander, exercised considerable authority. Shortly after Minakami's assumption of command, General Honda asked how long Myitkyina could stand. Minakami replied that the garrison might be able to hold out for as long as two months. A few days later, Honda was surprised to receive a second message stating, "The Myitkyina Garrison finds it difficult to hold with the poor defense facilities and meager supplies of ammunition." The Army staff concluded that the first message was undoubtedly Minakami's personal opinion as it reflected his determined character and that the second message incorporated the views of Maruyama who was more cognizant of the actual situation. In order that there should be no doubt as to the importance of holding Myitkyina, Honda sent the following message, "Maj. Gen. Minakami will defend Myitkyina to the death” — a message sent with deep regret and sadness according to the staff officers who wrote and dispatched the order. Heavy casualties had reduced the Japanese forces from around 3,000 to fewer than 1,500, further weakening the garrison's defensive capabilities. This number included the heavily wounded and hospital patients, who could only be evacuated by drifting down the Irrawaddy River on rafts, often intercepted by the unforgiving Kachin Levies. On July 24, eight rafts and a boat laden with Japanese were attacked on the Irrawaddy by Kachins of the OSS Detachment 101. Twenty-four Japanese were killed, two captured, and then it was learned these were hospital patients fleeing Myitkyina. Three more Japanese seized by friendly Burmans revealed that hospital patients were being evacuated by the simple expedient of letting them drift down the river on rafts. As these fierce defenders began to falter, General Wessels felt ready to launch his final push. Reinforced by the 149th and 90th Regiments, the American-Chinese forces made daily gains of several hundred yards during the last days of July, though at a significant cost. As the Japanese-held area shrank, counterattacks became less dynamic, captured positions were less fortified, and many Japanese dead were found to be severely wounded men returned to the line. Unbeknownst to the Americans, the desperate defenders had requested a withdrawal to the east by the end of the month. Though Minakami had intended to fight to the last, he ultimately agreed to preserve his men's lives. On the night of August 1, the Japanese began their escape, crossing the Irrawaddy east of the town. Weighing the many evidences that control of the situation was rapidly passing into their hands, Wessels and his colleagues drafted a new plan of attack. It included an ingenious device, credited to General Pan Yu-kun of the 50th Division. A raiding party, formed into fifteen heavily armed sections, was organized and briefed on infiltrating Japanese lines facing the 50th Division. Having made its way through the Japanese lines in darkness, it was to remain hidden until 0430 when the 50th would assault while the raiders spread confusion behind the Japanese lines. Meanwhile, air reconnaissance revealed many rafts moored against the Irrawaddy within the Japanese lines. "At 0300 hours (3 August), when the moon went down and rain and thunder set in, the raiding party of the 50th Division moved out. The approach was detected only once and some shots were fired at the raiders, who hit the ground. The Chinese did not return fire however, and after laying low for a while, moved out again quietly and cautiously." While the raiders created confusion behind Japanese lines, the 50th Division launched a full attack, quickly overwhelming the remaining enemy positions and capturing 187 prisoners, thus securing Myitkyina for the Chinese. However, about 800 Japanese managed to escape eastward and later rejoined their allies. Minakami was not among them. As the 3rd of August meandered on in a haze of gunfire, blood and rain, Minakami went to sit with his back against a tree. There came the sound of a pistol shot. Japanese officers nearby sprinted to the scene. The general's orderly was in tears. They found Minakami's body erect against the tree trunk, facing northeast, towards Japan. The ten-week siege resulted in approximately 3,000 Japanese killed or captured; 972 Chinese killed, 3,184 wounded, and 188 evacuated due to illness; and 272 Americans killed, 955 wounded, and 980 evacuated sick. Overall, the total American-Chinese casualties in 1944 amounted to 13,618 Chinese and 1,327 American casualties. A week later, the Galahad Unit, reduced to only 130 combat-effective men from the original 2,997, was disbanded. The fall of Myitkyina was General Stilwell's greatest victory, earning him a promotion to full general on August 1, two days before the city fell. The attack was costly in terms of suffering and losses, but the Mogaung-Myitkyina area was a significant prize. It allowed Ledo Road builders and American transport planes to move to Myitkyina and enabled ground forces to link up with other Chinese forces in neighboring Yunnan. As the fighting moved further south down the Hukawng and Mogaung valleys, it became safer for transports to use the lower, more southerly routes to China. This, in turn, increased Hump deliveries to China from 13,686 tons in May to 18,235 tons in June and 25,454 tons in July.  While the Allies celebrated victories in northern Burma, the situation in China was dire as the Ichi-Go offensive resulted in many Chinese casualties. By August 1, General Yokoyama had amassed 110,000 troops around Hengyang, equipped with five heavy artillery pieces, fifty mountain artillery pieces, and 40,000 shells. Conversely, General Fang's resilient defenders had dwindled to 3,000 exhausted troops, with their defenses largely destroyed. General Xue Yue's reinforcements had failed to reach Hengyang, leaving the Chinese forces to rely on the 46th Army to launch an attack along the railway. On August 4, Yokoyama initiated his main offensive. The 68th and 116th Divisions launched a significant assault from the south and southwest, while the 58th Division quietly positioned itself near the enemy's northern defenses. Initially, progress was slow. However, by August 5, Yokoyama's forces had captured Yoping and School Hill. The next day, the 116th Division secured part of the city's defenses. On August 6, the 58th Division breached the city walls from the north, forcing Fang to redeploy troops to counter this new threat. Intense street fighting broke out on August 7 as the defenders valiantly tried to repel the Japanese attacks. By nightfall, the 68th Division had overrun the southern defenses and entered part of the Walled City. Gradually, enemy troops began to surrender, and before dawn on August 8, after 48 days of fierce resistance, Fang was compelled to surrender. Following the capture of Hengyang, Yokoyama declared the successful completion of the initial phase of Operation Togo and promptly began preparations for the subsequent offensive. In this phase, the Japanese reported casualties of over 3860 killed, 8327 wounded, and 7099 sick, with an estimated Chinese casualty count exceeding 100,000, including 8400 killed and 5000 captured in Hengyang alone. To spearhead the next stage of Operation Togo targeting Guilin and Liuzhou, General Okamura Yasuji's 6th Area Army was established on August 25, comprising the 11th, 23rd, and 34th Armies, along with the 27th, 40th, 64th, and 68th Divisions, alongside additional support units. This allowed General Hata to focus on countering potential American landings on the Chinese coast while Okamura directed the offensives in eastern China. Ahead of this operation, Lieutenant-General Tanaka Hisakazu of the 23rd Army initiated a preliminary offensive in late June, positioning the 23rd Independent Mixed Brigade in the northeastern sector of the Luichow Peninsula, advancing the 22nd Independent Mixed Brigade to the Tanjiang River, securing the Jiangmen area with the 22nd Division, and capturing the Qingyuan sector with the 104th Division. By late August, Yokoyama had deployed six divisions along the Shuangfeng-Leiyang line, poised to eliminate the enemy in the district west of Hengyang. On August 29, he launched the offensive, with over 100,000 troops advancing southwest amidst heavy artillery bombardment. Intense ground and aerial combat ensued, resulting in the loss of 10 Japanese planes and 15 enemy aircraft. Despite fierce resistance from Chinese defenders over three days, their entire line collapsed on September 1, prompting a retreat towards Shaoyang, Qiyang, and Jiahe. However, the Japanese advanced relentlessly, covering nearly 100 kilometers in the following days without pause. By September 5, both Qiyang and Huochangpingzhen had fallen, followed by the seizure of Lingling Airdrome on September 8 by the 3rd Division. Progressing along a north-south axis, Japanese forces secured Shaoyang and Changning, while the 58th Division captured Dongan on the same day. With initial objectives achieved, Yokoyama ordered further pursuit, with the 3rd and 54th Divisions converging in the Quanzhou area by September 14. Meanwhile, Tanaka prepared for his offensive, with the bulk of the 104th Division moving towards Taipingzhen, and a raiding unit conducting a wide envelopment maneuver along the Zhukeng-Huaiji road towards Wuzhou by September 6. Subsequently, the 23rd Brigade began its northward march from Suixi. However, Tanaka's offensive wouldn't commence for a couple of weeks. Turning to the broader context of the Pacific War, General Stilwell celebrated a major victory with the fall of Myitkyina, while General Slim's successful defense against Operation U-Go further bolstered Allied morale in the CBI Theater. In Thailand, Prime Minister Phibun's regime faced a significant crisis as Japan struggled to meet the country's essential import needs, leading to inflation, rationing, shortages, black markets, smuggling, corruption, and profiteering. The anti-Japanese Free Thai underground movement, spearheaded by Regent Pridi Banomyong, infiltrated the government, stoking public discontent against both the Japanese occupiers and Phibun's administration. As a result, following the downfall of the Tojo government, Phibun found himself compelled to step down in late July. For his part, Phibun also was thinking of ways, he claims, to prepare to turn against the Japanese. Part of these preparations included proposals to move the capital to remote Phetchabun, north of Bangkok, and construct a “Buddhist City,” a sort of center for world Buddhism, near Saraburi—both grandiose projects in typically extravagant Phibun style. Moving to the isolated, mountain-ringed Phetchabun, Phibun later argued, would facilitate a Thai uprising against the Japanese. Yet on July 18, the Tojo government in Japan resigned, and only six days later the Thai National Assembly turned down both government bills and forced the resignation of Phibun as prime minister. The deputies in the assembly voted against these plans motivated in part by the fall of Tojo, who was closely associated in their minds with Phibun, in part by their feeling that the war was turning against Japan, and in part by their feeling that Phibun was too closely identified with an authoritarian past that must now be buried for the sake of improving relations with the Allies.  Politician Khuang Aphaiwong then assumed his position as Prime Minister on August 1. Serving as a compromise candidate, he navigated between Phibun's supporters and the opposition while maintaining cooperation with the Japanese and safeguarding Free Thai members who had collaborated with the Allies. Meanwhile, in China, the success of Operation Ichi-Go led to another leadership crisis. Despite the initial rejection of Stilwell commanding troops in China in 1942, the effective Japanese offensive posed a threat of defeat to the Chinese Government, reigniting the debate over command authority. This was especially significant as Chinese troops under Stilwell's command were achieving significant victories in northern Burma. However, Stilwell's vocal criticism of Chiang Kai-Shek's corrupt regime and incompetent generals strained their relationship. Chiang favored General Chennault, who proposed that with a monthly allocation of 10,000 tons for operations in northern China, his 14th Air Force could halt the Japanese offensive. Despite his strained relationship with Chennault, Stilwell redirected Hump allocations to increase the 14th Air Force's allocation to 8,425 tons, although he couldn't secure an additional 1,500 tons from the Matterhorn allocation. Chennault's aircraft managed to disrupt the Japanese advance, but failed to halt it completely. In late June, Stilwell faced criticism when Vice-President Henry Wallace visited Chongqing. While Wallace persuaded Chiang to allow a small American observer mission into Communist territory, he also recommended Stilwell's recall due to his perceived lack of diplomacy and strained relations with the Chinese leadership. Nonetheless, Stilwell maintained the backing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and President Roosevelt eventually nominated him to lead the China Theater, on the condition that he make every effort to avoid upsetting the Generalissimo. In July, the President attempted to persuade Chiang to accept this arrangement, but the Generalissimo employed various diplomatic maneuvers to reject the proposal, agreeing "in principle" only after an unspecified period for his forces to adjust. He also requested the presence of a presidential representative to facilitate smooth relations between himself and Stilwell. Major-General Patrick Hurley was appointed to this role and arrived in China in August. Concurrently, the Dixie Mission arrived in Yan'an, where over the following months, American observers assessed Communist society, military tactics, and guerrilla operations, issuing reports that commended them and suggested increased collaboration. Following the fall of Hengyang, tensions escalated in China, with rumors swirling about potential coup plans involving Marshall Li Zhongren and General Xue Yue against the Generalissimo. Meanwhile, Chennault urged Stilwell to divert Hump airlift capacity to supply ground forces in eastern China, a move opposed by Chiang, who feared supporting potential insurgents with lend-lease equipment. Stilwell, anticipating his imminent assumption of leadership in the China Theater, refrained from challenging Chiang's stance. With significant developments looming, the intensifying rift between Stilwell and Chiang foreshadowed the downfall of one of them. Elsewhere in the South Pacific, General MacArthur's troops had finished their final offensive in New Guinea and were preparing to return to the Philippines by way of an intermediate stop at Halmahera Island. To the east, Rabaul was completely surrounded, enduring heavy bombardment from Allied air forces. Meanwhile, on Bougainville, the remaining forces of the 17th Army had retreated to the island's southern region, unable to launch further counterattacks. The living conditions of the Japanese soldiers, never good under the best of circumstances, became increasingly desperate. Added to the dangers that forward troops always faced, such as contact with large American combat patrols, was the growing specter of starvation. Sealed off from regular supplies from New Ireland or New Britain, General Hyakutake's army had to depend entirely on its own laborers to acquire food. The normal rice ration of 750 grams of rice for each soldier was cut in April 1944 to 250 grams, and beginning in September there was no rice ration. A large portion of the available army and naval personnel had to be put to work growing food. Allied pilots took delight in dropping napalm on these garden plots whenever possible. The native workers who had been impressed into service were the first to defect, but soon many soldiers also just walked away from their units, taking the chance of surviving in the jungle on what could be gathered. After the failure of the March attack, morale in most units became deplorably low. There were instances, normally unimagined in the Japanese army, of open insubordination and even mutiny. Although General Hyakutake dreamed of a midsummer offensive, it became obvious that no operations as large as that smashed in March could be undertaken for months, if ever. Thus, almost as if by agreement, both sides adopted a defensive posture that minimized the conflict in the no-man's-land between them. In the Central Pacific, significant progress had been made over the past year, marked by the complete capture of the Gilbert, Marshall, and Mariana Islands, strengthening the Allied presence and providing a launching point for future offensives into the heart of the Japanese Empire. The next target for Admiral Nimitz was the Palaus, to be invaded concurrently with Halmahera. However, the architect of this southwestern advance was not Admiral Spruance, who had been overseeing operations with the 5th Fleet. Instead, it was Admiral Halsey's 3rd Fleet, known as the "Department of Dirty Tricks," that had been strategizing the next moves from Hawaii. Now, Admiral Halsey was set to assume command of the Pacific Fleet, leading the charge to the Palaus and the Philippines. This rotation in leadership between Halsey's 3rd Fleet and Spruance's 5th Fleet was orchestrated by Nimitz to maintain operational tempo and confuse the Japanese. The alternating command structure allowed for continuous planning of future operations while the active fleet conducted current ones. However, Tokyo was apprehensive about a potential invasion of the Philippines and sought to bolster its defenses. Following the surrender of the US Army Forces in the Philippines, the 14th Army, led by Lieutenant-General Tanaka Shizuichi, worked to establish military administration, secure cooperation from civilian institutions, and quell guerrilla groups across the countryside. Despite their endeavors, their control over certain regions, particularly in the Visayas and Mindanao, remained fragile. Allied submarines and aircraft from Australia and New Guinea also delivered supplies like signal equipment, weapons, explosives, propaganda materials, and counterfeit currency to support the guerrilla forces, further impeding Japanese efforts. Additionally, with the deteriorating situation in the South and Central Pacific, more troops were redirected from the Philippines' garrison to other areas, weakening the 14th Army, now commanded by Lieutenant-General Kuroda Shigenori since May 19, 1943. Undermanned and stretched thin, the Japanese halted their suppression operations in August, hoping that the imminent declaration of independence by the Second Philippine Republic would lead guerrillas to surrender. However, this strategy backfired, as the guerrillas only grew stronger during the pause. Consequently, Kuroda restarted intensive suppression operations in 1944, but guerrilla activities escalated in anticipation of the imminent liberation by American forces. As a result, the guerrillas gained strength in the following months, providing valuable intelligence to MacArthur's forces in preparation for their eventual return. Given this context, it was evident that the 14th Army would be ill-equipped to withstand an American invasion under the current circumstances. Due to its crucial strategic location bridging Japan and the southern region rich in natural resources, Japan couldn't risk losing the Philippines. It served as their primary rear base supporting the main defense perimeter. The Philippines were also to play the role of a rear base of operations–an assembly and staging area for troops and supplies and a concentration area for air reserves, to support operations at any threatened point on the main defense perimeter from the Marianas south to Western New Guinea and the Banda Sea area. To implement these plans, IGHQ in October 1943 directed the 14th Army to complete the establishment of the necessary base facilities by the spring of 1944. Major emphasis in this program was laid upon the construction of air bases. The Army alone planned to build or improve 30 fields in addition to 13 already in operational use or partially completed. The Navy projected 21 fields and seaplane bases to be ready for operational use by the end of 1944, expanding its total number of Philippine bases to 33. Line of communications and other rear­ area base installations were also to be expanded and improved. Of the 30 Army airfields projected in October 1943, six had been generally completed by May 1944, and 24 under construction. Of the 21 projected Navy fields, 15 were still incomplete by then. Consequently, in early 1944, the decision was made to strengthen the garrison in the Philippines. Initially, this involved reorganizing and expanding existing garrison units to establish four new independent mixed brigades. These brigades were primarily tasked with suppressing guerrilla activity, while infantry divisions were assigned to defend against potential enemy landings. However, despite the estimation that at least seven divisions were necessary for the defense of Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao, only the 16th Division was available. Additionally, it was deemed crucial to bolster air strength with at least two air divisions, anticipating Allied invasions in Halmahera and Palau before advancing to the Philippines. Plans were formulated in March to deploy reinforcements within eight months. In mid-May, General Terauchi relocated his headquarters to Manila to oversee operations more closely. Concurrently, efforts were made to transport the 30th Division to Mindanao and bring the 4th Air Army to Manila. Furthermore, the Philippines were reinforced with the 2nd and 4th Air Divisions, the latter being tasked with constructing 30 new airfields. In June, approximately 20,000 inexperienced replacements were transported to the Philippines to bolster the recently-formed independent mixed brigades, filling them up to division strength. Subsequently, in July, the 100th, 102nd, 103rd, and 105th Divisions were activated, along with the establishment of the 54th and 55th Independent Mixed Brigades. It's ironic that despite this reinforcement, the main Japanese forces were as inexperienced as the Philippine Army during MacArthur's defense. Nonetheless, Terauchi was resolute in further fortifying the Philippines to prevent its fall, unlike MacArthur's situation. By mid-July, the reinforced 58th Independent Mixed Brigade arrived at Lingayen. Later that month, the 14th Army underwent reorganization into the 14th Area Army, with units directly under its command tasked with defending the northern Philippines. Meanwhile, the 35th Army, led by Lieutenant-General Suzuki Sosaki, was established under the 14th Area Army to defend Mindanao and the Visayas. Additionally, Tokyo finalized plans for decisive battle operations, codenamed Sho-Go, covering the Philippines-Formosa-Ryukyus-Japan-Kuriles area. This determined the disposition of Army and Navy air forces across the Pacific, with the Philippines receiving the reorganized 1st and 2nd Air Fleets and the 4th Air Army. The Philippine garrison was strengthened to a total of nine divisions and four brigades, with the 1st Division at Shanghai and the 68th Independent Brigade at Formosa designated as general reserves. Defenses and fortifications were constructed at Luzon in preparation for the decisive battle there.  Known as the Combined Fleet Top Secret Operations Order No. 84,  issued on 1 August, this fixed the new tactical grouping of naval forces for the Sho-Go Operations. Almost the entire surface combat strength of the Fleet was included in a Task Force placed under the overall command of the First Mobile Fleet Commander, Vice­Adm. Ozawa Jisaburo. This force was broken down into three tactical groups: (1) the Task Force Main Body, directly commanded by Vice­Adm. Ozawa and consisting of most of the Third Fleet (carrier forces): (2) the First Striking Force, commanded by Vice Adm. Kurita Takeo and made up of the Second Fleet with part of the 10th Destroyer Squadron attached: (3) the Second Striking Force, commanded by Vice Adm. Shima Kiyohide and composed of the Fifth Fleet plus two destroyer divisions and the battleships Fuso and Yamashiro. The First Striking Force would be stationed at Lingga Anchorage, while the Task Force Main Body and the Second Striking Force would be stationed in the western part of the Inland Sea. However, if an enemy attack was expected, the First Striking Force would advance from Lingga Anchorage to Brunei, Coron or Guimaras while the Task Force Main Body and the Second Striking Force remained in the Inland Sea and prepared to attack the north flank of the enemy task force. During August, the Navy Section of Imperial General Headquarters also took action to give the Combined Fleet more unified operational control of naval forces in order to facilitate the execution of the Sho-Go plans. On 9 August the General Escort Command and units assigned to naval stations were placed under operational command of the Combined Fleet, and on 21 August the China Area Fleet was similarly placed under Combined Fleet command. On 10 August the 1st Carrier Division, reorganized around two newly-commissioned regular carriers, was added to the Task Force Main Body. Vice Adm. Ozawa, Task Force Commander, meanwhile set 15 October as the target date for completion of the reorganization and training of the 3d and 4th Carrier Division air groups. Concurrently with these preparations, steps were taken to strengthen the antiaircraft armament of combat units. Accordingly, the Japanese sought to deploy the 8th and 26th Divisions, the 2nd Tank Division, and the 61st Independent Mixed Brigade to the Luzon region for a decisive battle. However, enemy submarines posed a constant threat. Since February, they had been patrolling the South China Sea, targeting the Hi Convoys supplying Japanese territories in Southeast Asia and Japan itself. During these engagements, Admiral Ijuin was killed aboard the patrol boat Iki. Between August 18 and 25, Admiral Kajioka's Hi-71 convoy, carrying the 26th Division, was attacked by six American submarines. The escort carrier Taiyo, destroyers Yunagi and Asakaze, two oilers, four transports, and three kaibokans were sunk, with 7420 soldiers of the 26th Division lost. The submarine Harder was the only American vessel sunk in retaliation. Kajioka's Hi-72 convoy, returning from Luzon, was also attacked, resulting in the sinking of his flagship, the kaibokan Hirato, and the loss of the destroyer Shikinami, three transports, and one oiler. Despite these setbacks, advance units of the 8th Division, 2nd Tank Division, and 61st Independent Mixed Brigade successfully reached the Philippines in September. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. After months the siege of Myitkyina had finally ended. The Japanese had held out as long as they could, but lack of supplies and rather terrible leadership lost them the fight. Meanwhile, in China, Japanese offensives intensified, challenging Chinese defenses and leadership. It seemed war was coming to the Philippines, where the Japanese prepared to fight to the death.

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.

This is Part 3 of our Gishiwajinden Tour--following the route of the Wei embassy through the land of Wa and looking at the various locations along the way.  So far we've looked at the old land of Gaya, as represented at Gimhae, the site of the old Geumgwan Gaya, and the island of Tsushima, on the border.  This episode we look at the next island:  Iki. It might be easy to overlook Iki--it was neither the center nor exactly the periphery.  From the point of view of those in the court or those outside it was rather "mid", in a literal sense.  However, it was certainly at the center of its own vibrant history, which was certainly important to everyone there, and hosted a thriving community. It is also a great place to visit in the modern day: something of a hidden gem for anyone looking for a slightly more out of the way place to visit, with a slower pace than cities like Tokyo. For more, see our blog page:  https://www.sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/iki-koku Rough Translation: Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is Gishiwajinden Tour Part 3: Iki-koku. As regular listeners know, we are currently taking a break from the Chronicles.  With the Isshi Incident of 645—see Episode 107—we are about to get into the time known as “Taika” or “Great Change”.  Spoiler alert: This is the rise of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou; Nakatomi Kamako, aka Nakatomi Kamatari, the progenitor of the Fujiwara family; and more.  It is the beginning of what is known as the Ritsuryo System, the idea of a state governed by laws and punishments similar to what we see on the continent, based largely on Confucian principles, but mixed with a healthy dose of local tradition.  There is a lot there, and I want to do it justice.  And so for now I have a little bonus content for you. Earlier this year, Ellen and I took a trip based on the account in the Gishiwajinden, the Wa section of the Weizhi, the section in the Wei Chronicles regarding the trip to visit Queen Himiko of Wa.  In Part 1 we talked about our trip to Gimhae, formerly known as Geumgwan Gaya, a part of the old Gaya—or Kara—confederacy, with close ties to the archipelago.  Part 2 we talked about our next stop, the island of Tsushima.  But we didn't just talk about it in the 3rd century, because if you visit there is so much more to see from an historical perspective. This episode we are talking about the island of Iki, aka Ikijima, though in the Weizhi it is known as its own country:  Iki-koku. Relative to Tsushima, Iki island is much smaller—about one fifth the overall landmass.  However, it is much flatter as well—the highest point is only 212 meters above sea level, compared to Tsushima, which rises to about 649 meters at Mt. Yatate.  This makes Iki an island with a lot of flat land or rolling hills—perfect for the kind of wet rice paddy agriculture that created the population boom in the Yayoi period, which we will talk about here in a minute.  However, I will note that even today the population of Iki is similar to that of Tsushima despite having much less space. The flora and fauna of the island is much closer to that of the rest of the archipelago—in fact, it is nearly identical to what you would find in southwest Kyushu.  This is not surprising given how close it is.  For reference, Hitakatsu, on Tsushima is under 50km from Busan, Korea, and about 147 km to Hakata port in Fukuoka, or 138 km if you depart from Izuhara port instead.  Comparatively, it is about 76 km from Hakata to Iki, and even less—just about 42km—from Iki to Karatsu, south of Fukuoka, and these routes are dotted with islands along the way.  At its closest point, Iki is probably only 20km from Kyushu, but the ferries only stop at certain ports.  Tsushima to Iki, on the other hand, is around 68 km, from Izuhara to Iki.  Iki is about as close to Karatsu as Tsushima is to Pusan, and they are both further away from each other than from their respective larger landmasses.  That makes this leg – Tsushima to Iki - the longest leg in the trip, realistically. Today, both Iki and Tsushima, along with the Goto islands to the south, are all part of Nagasaki prefecture, despite the fact that they are both closer to Saga and Fukuoka prefectures.  This is in part because Iki came under the jurisdiction of the Hirado domain, which also was heavily involved with foreign trade through Nagasaki. Today, Iki is broken up into roughly four areas.  This includes Katsumoto, Ashibe, Indoji, and Gonoura, based around the four main port towns on the island.  Three of these ports, Ashibe, Indoji, and Gonoura, have ferries that regularly travel to either Tsushima or Kyushu. And all of them have various boats to take people out the islands around Iki, one of the major draws for many people coming to the island being to see the natural beauty of its coastline and surrounding waters.  There is also a small airport. Although Iki is small—you can drive from one end to the other in 40 minutes or less—I highly recommend renting a car, much like Tsushima.  This will be helpful to get to various sites, although be aware that while the main roads are well cared for, there are plenty of roads where it is better to go on foot rather than get stopped by fallen trees and branches in a less well maintained area.  Taxis can be had, but aren't always convenient, and that adds cost and time.  A car will give you much more freedom to get around. Iki is a popular tourist destination, with more people coming during the summer months.  We were there in the off-season, which was somewhat nice, but also meant that many restaurants and the like were closed.  Also, similar to Tsushima, there isn't a konbini—a convenience store—on every street corner.  You can certainly find them, but just be aware.  That said, we never really had a problem finding what we needed. Iki is known for several things.  One, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the squid, and you can see the squid boats in the harbor or out at night.  They have arrays of lights set up, to help draw the squid to the surface, a common technique around the world that makes squid fishing quite distinctive. In addition, Iki island is quite proud of its beef, a much more recent addition.  The flat land allows them to raise cattle, and the Iki raised wagyu cattle, known as Iki-gyu, is highly prized.  You can find several yakiniku restaurants around the island, that particular Japanese style of Korean barbecue where you grill up thinly sliced beef on a hot skillet or even an open grill at your table. An older product is the barley shochu.  Iki island is said to be the birthplace of barley shochu, developing it in the 17th century.  Back then, taxes from the island had to be paid in rice, and there wasn't enough left to make much alcohol, such as traditional sake.  As such, the local farmers started using barley and koji, instead, to make the base alcohol that they then distilled into shochu.  Shochu itself goes back to at least the 16th century, as distilling techniques reached southern Japan via either the Ryukyu kingdom or via the Korean peninsula—records are unclear, as these techniques reached both places before Japan, and Kyushu had connections to each.  That said, early shochu was made with rice, and later it would be made with cheaper ingredients, such as barley, in the case of Iki, or sweet potato, in Satsuma, modern Kagoshima.  These methods spread to other parts of Japan. There are plenty of other food options available on the island as well, and I don't think we had a bad meal anywhere we went. And so we left Izuhara port, on Tsushima, early in the morning and arrived at Ashibe port around lunchtime.  We had arranged a car to meet us at the port, and after grabbing a bite at a locally renowned yakinikuya, we decided to start getting our historical bearings on the island.   Our main objective on Iki island was to see the Yayoi site of Harunotsuji and the Iki-koku Museum, the museum of the country of Iki. Quick note for anyone looking this up:  The “Haru” in “Harunotsuji” is typically pronounced “Hara” outside of Kyushu and Okinawa.  This affects a lot of placenames in Kyushu, including Iki, and likely comes from remnants of an old dialect of Japanese spoken in this area.  Whatever the reason, if you look up the site in Japanese you may want to type “Hara-no-tsuji” to help find the right kanji. Harunotsuji site is an incredible find in regards to the Yayoi period.  It was a large settlement built on flat land in the interior of the island.  Today it is surrounded by rice fields, and fortunately nobody else seems to have built up on the raised hills where the settlement once stood, allowing the site to remain for us to find years later.  This is one of the better preserved sites from the Yayoi period, and is often touted as the likely center of activity in Iki during that period.  Of course, as with other sites, like Yoshinogari, we can only see those sites  that were preserved—those that were built upon in later generations may not have left any trace.  However, in this case there's clear evidence that there was a thriving community here.  And because of that, and the tremendous effort they've put into reconstructing the site, as well as the excellent museum, we wanted to make sure that we gave Iki a visit. There aren't many museums on Iki island, but the Iki-koku museum ranks up there with some of the best we've visited.  The building itself is built to blend into the landscape, and from the observation tower you can look out over the Harunotsuji site.  The museum provides an automated introduction to the area, with a small film depicting what they believe life was probably like back in the Yayoi period.  From there you travel down a hallway that takes you through the history of Iki, but eventually deposits you in a room focused on the Yayoi period.  Here they show a reconstructed boat, as well as a large diorama of the Harunotsuji site. One of the major finds at Harunotsuji is what appears to be a dock, reinforced with rocks, similar to what they find on the continent.  This dock was at a small stream that was once larger, and was likely used to ferry goods and people from Harunotsuji to a settlement or outpost on the shore.  It gives greater insight into what trade and life looked like. Speaking of which, props to the museum for their excellent use of often comical figures in their diorama, which is clearly made to appeal to young and old alike.  They help humanize the figures, and each part of the layout that they created of the site tells a story about what was going on. In addition to the diorama of the site, and what it may have looked like, there were also actual Yayoi era pots that were there which you could pick up and handle yourself.  I have to admit that I did this with some trepidation, even knowing that these were not particularly special, and that there are many pots and shards that are found at sites like these.  Still, it was something to actually handle a pot that was made back in that time—something that was made by an actual person living back then and used for whatever purpose before it was discarded or lost, only to be found centuries later.  Besides the room on the site, there is another side to the museum in that it is a working archaeological center.  You can see the lab where people are working, and they also have a room where you can see the stacks—the giant shelves with all of the historical and archaeological bits and bobs that weren't on display for one reason or another.  That is something that many people don't always appreciate:  For many museums, only a portion of their collection is actually on display.  It was really great to see all of that out in the open. The museum also has a café and some function rooms, as well as a giant observation tower, from which it feels like you can see the entire island, and beyond.  You could definitely look down and see the site, but you could also see some of the more distant islands as well. From the museum we went down to see the actual Harunotsuji site.  There is another museum there, which was a little less impressive but still quite informative, and it was where you park and then walk over to the site itself.  And here I admit that it was getting late, so we came back to it another day, but it doesn't really take that long to see the site itself. Most of the site sits on a rise of land that sits just a little higher than the surrounding fields, with a gentle slope to it.  It is oddly shaped, likely because they used the natural contours of the land rather than explicitly building up a terrace.  There is another rise towards one end of the settlement, with what may have been a fence around the area, indicating that the buildings in that area were set aside as special.  There are also ditches that appear to have been purposefully dug to separate a part of the rise from the area of the settlement, as buildings were apparently found on one side but not the other.  What was found was a small area surrounded by a moat, generally thought to have been used for some kind of ritual. At the site today are reconstructed buildings of multiple kinds, based on the archeological findings.  There are pit buildings, buildings sitting flush on the ground, as well as raised buildings, all based likely on the arrangements and size of post-holes and the like.  There also appears to have been some kind of gate or barrier structure, also based on postholes, which they have physically reconstructed. It is always tricky to interpret what a building looked like other than guessing at its general shape and size.  Extremely large post-holes likely held larger posts, which would make particular sense if they were for a tall structure, like a watchtower, but exact architectural features such as doorways, roof structure, etc. are derived based on other examples as well as Shinto shrine architecture, which seems to originate from some of the early Yayoi buildings. There were also some finds in the surrounding areas, including what appears to have been a stone-lined dock for boats to pull up, some kind of guard post to inspect people entering or leaving the settlement, and moats, which likely surrounded the settlement as well. Harunotsuji is not the only Yayoi site that has been excavated on Iki island, but nothing else is quite so large.  Put in context with other archaeological sites from the same time period, Harunotsuji is thought to have been the most powerful, and therefore where the ruler, or the quote-unquote “King”, of Iki would have lived. Here I'd note that the interpretation of Harunotsuji as a kingly capital is quite prevalent in the local literature, but what exactly was a “king” in this sense isn't fully explored.  As we talked about two episodes back with Gimhae and the quote-unquote “Kingdom” of Gaya, Iki-koku probably better fits the English term of a large chiefdom, rather than a kingdom.  However, that would also likely apply to Queen Himiko, as well—even if her chiefdom dwarfed Iki-koku by comparison. That said, there certainly appears to be a social stratification of some kind going on at the site, especially with a special area clearly set aside at one end of the settlement.  Was that where a shaman-king—or queen—similar to Himiko carried out private, arcane rites on behalf of the entire settlement?  Perhaps the entire island?  Or is it something else? Unfortunately, we can't really know, at least not right now.  However, we do know that it was an important part of the trade routes from the continent out to the archipelago.  This isn't just because of the Weizhi, or the common sense that this is the clearest route between the two, but also because of artifacts found at the site, which include abundant goods from the continent.  In addition we found evidence of dogs, armor, shields, and various pots. One thing I didn't see evidence of was a large funkyubo, like at Yoshinogari, where they buried people in pots on a large, communal cemetery mound.  Here the highest elevations appear to have been used for living structures.  There were graves discovered, and some of these were the pot-style burials found at Yoshinogari and the continent, and others were rectangular, stone-lined coffins, similar to those used on the Tsushima kofun:  they are lined with large, flat slabs that define a rectangle, into which the body is placed, and then flat slabs of stone are used to cover it back up. Harunotsuji shows signs of habitation from the start of the Yayoi period to the beginning of the Kofun period.  After that, though, the trail grows a bit cold. We do know, however, that people were still living on Iki through the Kofun period—we assume they didn't just pack up their bags and leave—and that is thanks to the many kofun found across the island.  There are some 280 kofun preserved today, and Edo period accounts had that number at more like 340.  Indeed, Iki has one of the largest and best preserved collection of kofun of all of Kyushu.   Many are smaller kofun, but there are plenty of groups of large kingly kofun.  A group of the larger kingly kofun can be found in the border area between Katsumoto-cho and Ashibe-cho, due west of Ashibe port.  This includes the large Soroku Kofun, Oni-no-iwaya Kofun, the Sasazuka Kofun, as well as the Kakegi kofun and the Yurihata Kofun-gun.  Soroku kofun, a large, keyhole shaped tomb, boasts a length of 91 meters, making it not only the largest on the island, but the largest in all of Nagasaki prefecture.   Kofun culture on the island differed slightly from elsewhere.  For instance, there is evidence of multiple burials in the same tomb, suggesting that they were viewed more like family mausoleums than  simply a single tomb structure. The earliest kofun found on Iki so far can be dated to about the latter half of the 5th century, with most of them being built in the 6th to 7th centuries.  Many are stone chambers with a horizontal entryway, which in the case of the Kakegi and Sasazuka kofun, are open to those who want to get in and explore.  Be aware, though, as many signs tell you, various local residents have also made these tombs their homes, including bats, centipedes, snakes, and more.  Most of them are relatively harmless, but it is always good to know what you are getting into. With the earliest kofun on the island dating to about the 5th century, this does pose a slight question yet to be answered by the archaeological record:  Where were people living in the century between the end of Harunotsuji and the start of the kofun building period?  Heck, where were people living on the island at all?  We certainly know where the dead were buried. Looking at a map, one probably assumes that many of the kingly kofun would have been built somewhat near a population center.  After all, you don't build giant burial mounds just to hide them—these would have likely been visible to people in some way, shape, or form.  I would note that modern roads, likely built on earlier pathways, wind in between the kofun, even today. Personally, I can't help but notice that the Iki Kokubunji temple, the Provincial temple built in the 8th century, was quite close to some of the kingly kofun in Katsumoto.  It is said that this temple was originally built as the family temple of the Iki clan.  As one might guess from the name, the Iki were the traditional rulers of Iki, officially appointed by Yamato as the “Agata-nushi” or district lord, and later as “Shima no Miyatsuko”—the island equivalent of a “Kuni no Miyatsuko”.  Various biographies trace the Iki back to various lineages close to or intertwined with the Nakatomi.  However, this is not without some debate, and it is entirely possible that any such ties were fabricated to give the Iki clan greater clout and stature.  It is possible, and even likely, that the Iki clan grew out of the ruling elite on Iki island. In addition, we have the old Tsukiyomi Jinja, said to be the oldest on the island, and the Kunikatanushi shrine built right next to the Kokubunji site.  The Tsukiyomi shrine is dedicated to the moon god, who is said to be the god of navigation, among other things, and this is the clan shrine of the Iki clan. It is unclear, but seems plausible that the center of the Iki polity may have shifted north, to the modern Kokubun area.  If so, and if this continued to be the area of the regional government headquarters through the Nara period and beyond, then it is possible that any earlier settlements would have simply been covered up and even erased by later buildings and structures.  I don't think we'll ever truly know, though, unless something significant is uncovered. We do have some historical records of later Iki, quite understandable as it was where many of the envoys and expeditions to and from the mainland would have stopped. In the 11th century, Iki, along with Tsushima, was attacked by pirates from the mainland, thought to be of Jurchen descent, in an event called the Toi Invasion, which caused quite a bit of destruction.  After that we see the rise of the Matsura clan.  They arose in the Matsura area of Hizen province, just a little ways over from Karatsu.  That name may be related to “Matsuro”, but we'll talk more about that when we get to Karatsu. The Matsura largely came to power thanks to their navy—which was a navy to some and pirates to others.  They ended up gaining a foothold in Iki island. Whatever plans they had, however, met with a giant setback in 1274.  As we discussed last episode, that was when the first Mongol invasion hit Japan, and after steamrolling through Tsushima they began a bloody conquest of Iki.  The video game, Ghosts of Tsushima, which we talked about fairly extensively last episode for, well, obvious reasons, actually has an expanded Iki island area for those who want to try fighting off this invasion for themselves.  There are numerous reminders across the island of the invasions, both in 1274 and 1281.  The death toll was catastrophic, and even today parents will often tell their children that if they don't behave the Mongols will come back and take them away. In 1338, soon afer the Ashikaga shogun came to power, Ashikaga Takauji and his brother, Tadayoshi, directed the erection of temples in all 66 provinces, including Iki, to pray for the repose of those who died in battle during turbulent times, including the Mongol invasions and the later civil war.  That temple is still there, just a little ways north from the Harunotsuji site. The temple building itself only dates from the Edo period, as it burned down multiple times, but it is still said that it is the oldest extant temple building on the island.  There is a large cedar tree thought to be over a thousand years old, which may have even been there during the Toi and Mongol invasions.  There are also signs of Christian activity in some of the artwork, if you know what to look for. When Europeans arrived in Japan in the 16th century, they brought not only guns, but also a new religion:  Christianity.  Priests were given permission to set up churches and convert people.  Some daimyo converted—whether out of true faith or simply to get more lucrative trading deals with Europeans—and they often made their entire fief convert as well.  When Christianity was eventually outlawed, many Christian communities went underground, becoming known as “Hidden Christians.”  A lot of these communities continued, especially in the Iki and Goto islands, which were a little further away from shogunal authority.  They continued despite the lack of priests and Bibles, often using iconography that could be plausibly passed off as Buddhist or Shinto in nature.  Many remained in hiding throughout the Edo period, only revealing themselves after the Meiji government came in and issued a law protecting the freedom of religion, including Christianity.  Around Iki you will occasionally find little hints of such communities' existence. The 16th century saw more than just European traders and new religions.  The Matsura clan retained control over the island from their base in Hirado, even during the tumultuous era of Warring States.  Last episode we talked about how Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the new Taiko, came out of that time and declared war on the Joseon court, in Korea. To start with he built Nagoya castle on Kyushu and moved himself and all of his retainers out to it.  And before you ask, no, this probably isn't the Nagoya castle you are thinking of.  Similar name, but different kanji characters Anyway, from Nagoya on the coast of Kyushu, supply lines were run out to Tsushima, and then across to Busan.  To defend against a counterattack by Joseon forces, they built castles along the way as well.  In Iki, this meant building several, including Katsumoto-jo, at the northern end of the island, under the command of Matsura Shigenobu. Later, Tokugawa Ieyasu, eager to restore good will with the peninsula, would have the castles intentionally ruined, often by removing key stones so that they could no longer be considered defensible.  Today you can climb up to the Katsumoto-jo castle site and see the stones of the main gate and get a tremendous view from the observation platform. Katsumoto Castle isn't the only thing in Katsumoto that still remains from that time.  There is a local shrine, the Shomogu Shrine, which has a gate donated by Kato Kiyomasa, one of the generals who led troops on the invasion of Korea.  They also hold a cup that he is said to have donated. This shrine is certainly interesting and worth a visit.  Traditionally, they say that it was built on the site where Jingu Tennou departed from Iki during her legendary conquest of the Korean peninsula.  According to at least one source, at that time she called the place Kazamoto, the place where the wind comes from, and when she returned she changed it to Katsumoto, the place where her victory came from.  Of course, as we know, that whole narrative is rather suspect.  It is possible that the area was known as Kazamoto and that changed to Katsumoto. It also doesn't help that this is also where the Mongol army came ashore back in the 13th century, and I suspect that not much remained from before.  Still, there is a stone that is said to have the print of Jingu's horse's foot as she left, and it was at least connected to the ocean, given its location. There is a contention that this shrine may have once been known as “Nakatsu” shrine, literally “Middle port” shrine, one of the shrines listed in the Engi Shiki.  However, there is another Nakatsu shrine that also claims this distinction, also in Katsumoto-cho.  The Shomogu shrine theory holds that this was a branch shrine of Shomogu shrine, then known as Nakatsu.  This makes some sense as the current Nakatsu shrine is more inland, not exactly lending itself to being the “Middle Port” Shrine.  Then again, it would have referred to “Nakatsumiya”, meaning the “middle shrine” or “middle palace”, which puts us back at square one. More important than the actual history of this shrine, at least in the 16th century, is the fact that those generals heading off to conquer the Korean peninsula definitely would have appreciated praying to the spirit of Jingu Tennou before heading off to try it a second time.  Shomogu Shrine clearly had a link with her by then. By the way, slight side note, the “Shomo” of “Shomogu” literally means “Holy Mother”.  In this case it is referencing the “Holy Mother” Jingu Tenno, who was pregnant when she left Japan and didn't give birth until she came back—not quite a virgin birth.  “Shomo” was also the term that Christians, particularly hidden Christians, used to reference the Virgin Mary.  While I cannot find any evidence that Shomogu Shrine was connected with Christianity—its existence and worship there predates that religion coming to the archipelago by some time—it is still one of those things that the Hidden Christians could have used to their advantage, hiding their worship of the Virgin Mary and her holy child behind the name for Jingu Tenno. Now the town of Katsumoto, although only briefly a castle town, was still quite important through the Edo period, and the main street certainly recalls a time long past.  We stayed in a ryokan there that was over 100 years old, and there is both a sake brewery, and a craft beer brewery inside an old sake brewery, just down the street.  It isn't a big town, but it has character. In the Edo period, many of the Joseon envoys stopped in Katsumoto on their way to or from the archipelago.  These envoys typically had around 400 to 450 of their own people from Korea, but by the time they reached Iki they were joined by about 800 quote-unquote “guides” from Tsushima who were there to help them with whatever they needed.  Technically it was up to the Matsura daimyo, in Hirado, to provide for their needs, but it seems that more often than not that role more immediately fell to the wealthiest family on the island, the Toi family. The Toi family—not to be confused with the Toi invasion—made their money from capturing whales; a lucrative but dangerous enterprise, especially given the state of the boats at the time.  The stone wall of their mansion can still be seen in Katsumoto, though it is now wedged in between other buildings, as the mansion itself is otherwise long gone.  They may not have been daimyo, but they were apparently the rough equivalent for the people of Iki, and certainly Katsumoto. The envoys ended up calling at Katsumoto about 19 times between 1607 and 1811—11 times on the outbound trip and 8 times going the other direction.  For one mission, in the 18th century, we are even provided the amount of food that they required, which included 1500 sweet potatoes, 15,000 eggs, 7 and a half tons of abalone, 3 tons of squid, 7 and a half tons of rice, and 15 koku of sake, equaling about 1500 standard bottles, today.  A drawing of the 1748 envoy showed parts of Katsumoto that you can still visit, today, including the old boat launch, the Shomogu shrine and nearby streets, Shigayama, and what is today “Itsukushima Shrine”, related to the worship of Susano'o's three daughters, as are the Munakata shrines and the Itsukushima shrine on Miyajima with the famous torii in the water. Besides the historical sites, Iki island offers a plethora of other activities and attractions.  The famous monkey rock, or Saruiwa, is a famed natural feature, as are many others.  There are also beaches that people appear to enjoy—though we were there in the winter, so not great—or just getting out in a boat and seeing the natural beauty of the island.  There are also many more shrines and temples to visit; Iki has its own 88 temple pilgrimage based on the 88 temple pilgrimage of places like Shikoku.  You can also do a pilgrimage of the many Shinto shrines, some of which are mentioned in historical documents like the Engi Shiki and others that are more modern.  While many of the buildings are often newer, and things have of course changed over the centuries, these sites often still contain connections to history, and may even have historical treasures in their storehouses or on the grounds. We only had a limited time, so tried to keep our trip focused on more of the Yayoi and Kofun era stuff.  We both agreed we would gladly go back again in a heartbeat. Next up, we caught the ferry from Indoji on Iki over to Karatsu port on Kyushu, what is thought to be the site of the old Matsuro kingdom.  While others might point to the modern Matsuura city area, this region is may be more likely, and we'll talk about that next episode.  In addition, we'll talk about Karatsu, which literally means “Chinese port”, and about the nearby castle ruins of Nagoya castle—an area that was, for about seven brief years, in the late 16th century the de facto capital of Japan. But that will be next time. Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support. 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.

This is Part 2 of our special Gishiwajinden Tour from Gaya to Tsushima, Iki, Matsuro, Ito, and Na--aka Gimhae and Busan to Tsushima, Iki, Karatsu, Itoshima, and Fukuoka.  This time we talk about the island of Tsushima, the border island between Japan and Korea.  While itself a difficult place to make a living, it has long been the border--a place for foreign ambassadors, invadors, and pirates alike. For photos and more, check out our blogpost:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/tsushima Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is Gishiwajinden Tour Stop 2: Tsushima. As I mentioned last episode, we are taking a break right now from the workings of the Chronicles while I prep a bit more research on the Taika reform.  As we do so, I'm taking you through a recent trip we took trying to follow the ancient sea routes from Gaya, on the Korean peninsula, across the islands to Na, in modern Fukuoka.  This may have been first described in the Wei Chronicles, the Weizhi, but it was the pathway that many visitors to the archipelago took up through the famous Mongol invasion, and even later missions from the Joseon kingdom on the Korean peninsula. Last episode, we talked about our start at Gimhae and Pusan.  Gimhae is the old Geumgwan Gaya, as far as we can tell, and had close connections with the archipelago as evidenced by the common items of material culture found on both sides of the strait.  From the coast of the Korean peninsula, ships would then sail for the island of Tsushima, the nearest of the islands between the mainland and the Japanese archipelago.  Today, ships still sail from Korea to Japan, but most leave out of the port of Pusan.  This includes regular cruise ships as well as specialty cruises and ferries.  For those who want, there are some popular trips between Pusan and Fukuoka or Pusan all the way to Osaka, through the Seto Inland Sea.  For us, however, we were looking at the shortest ferries, those to Tsushima.  Tsushima is a large island situated in the strait between Korea and Japan.  Technically it is actually three islands, as channels were dug in the 20th century to allow ships stationed around the island to quickly pass through rather than going all the way around. Tsushima is the closest Japanese island to Korea, actually closer to Korea than to the rest of Japan, which makes it a fun day trip from Pusan, so they get a lot of Korean tourists.  There are two ports that the ferries run to, generally speaking.  In the north is Hitakatsu, which is mainly a port for people coming from Korea.  Further south is Izuhara, which is the old castle town, where the So family once administered the island and relations with the continent, and where you can get a ferry to Iki from. Unfortunately for us, as I mentioned last episode, it turned out that the kami of the waves thwarted us in our plans to sail from Busan to Tsushima.  And so we ended up flying into Tsushima Airport, instead, which actually required us to take an international flight over to Fukuoka and then a short domestic flight back to Tsushima.  On the one hand, this was a lot of time out of our way, but on the other they were nice short flights with a break in the Fukuoka airport, which has great restaurants in the domestic terminal.  Furthermore, since we came into the centrally-located Tsushima airport, this route also gave us relatively easy access to local rental car agencies, which was helpful because although there is a bus service that runs up and down the islands, if you really want to explore Tsushima it is best to have a car.  Note that also means having an International Driver's Permit, at least in most cases, unless you have a valid Japanese drivers' license. As for why you need a car:  There is a bus route from north to south, but for many of the places you will likely want to go will take a bit more to get to.  If you speak Japanese and have a phone there are several taxi companies you can call, and you can try a taxi app, though make sure it works on the island.  In the end, having a car is extremely convenient. Tsushima is also quite mountainous, without a lot of flat land, and there are numerous bays and inlets in which ships can hide and shelter from bad weather—or worse.  Tsushima is renowned for its natural beauty.  Flora and fauna are shared with continent and the archipelago.  There are local subspecies of otter and deer found on the islands, but also the Yamaneko, or Mountain Cat, a subspecies of the Eurasian leopard cat that   is only found in Japan on Tsushima and on Iriomote, in the southern Okinawan island chain.  They also have their own breed of horse, as well, related to the ancient horses bred there since at least the 8th century. Tsushima is clearly an important part of Japan, and the early stories of the creation of the archipelago often include Tsushima as one of the original eight islands mentioned in the creation story.  That suggests it has been considered an ancient part of the archipelago since at least the 8th century, and likely much earlier. Humans likely first came to Tsushima on their crossing from what is now the Korean peninsula over to the archipelago at the end of the Pleistocene era, when sea levels were much lower.  However, we don't have clear evidence of humans until later, and this is likely because the terrain made it difficult to cultivate the land, and most of the activity was  focused on making a livelihood out of the ocean. Currently we have clear evidence of humans on the island from at least the Jomon period, including remnants such as shellmounds, though we don't have any clear sign of habitation.  It is possible that fishermen and others came to the islands during certain seasons, setting up fish camps and the like, and then departed, but it could be that there were more permanent settlements and we just haven't found them yet.  Most of the Jomon sites appear to be on the northern part of Tsushima, what is now the “upper island”, though, again, lack of evidence should not be taken as evidence of lack, and there could be more we just haven't found yet.  After all, sites like Izuhara, which was quite populated in later periods, may have disturbed any underlying layers that we could otherwise hope to find there, and perhaps we will one day stumble on something more that will change our understanding.  Things change a bit in the Yayoi period, and we see clear evidence of settlements, pit buildings, graves, and grave goods at various sites up through the Kofun period.   Unsurprisingly, the assembly of goods found include both archipelagic and continental material, which fits with its position in between the various cultures. Understandably, most of these archeological sites were investigated and then either covered back up for preservation or replaced by construction – so in many cases there isn't anything to see now, besides the artifacts in the museum.  But some of the earliest clear evidence that you can still go see today are the several kofun, ancient tumuli, scattered around the island at different points.  Most of the kofun on the island appear to be similar, and overall fairly small.  These are not the most impressive kofun—not the giant mounds found in places like Nara, Osaka, Kibi, or even up in Izumo.  However, to students of the era they are still very cool to see as monuments of that ancient time.  One example of this that we visited was the Niso-kofungun, or the Niso Kofun group.  The Niso Kofungun is not like what you might expect in the Nara basin or the Osaka area.  First, you drive out to the end of the road in a small fishing community, and from there go on a small hike to see the kofun themselves.  Today the mounds are mostly hidden from view by trees, though there are signs put up to mark each one.  Some of them have a more well defined shape than others, too, with at least one demonstrating what appears to be a long, thin keyhole shape, taking advantage of the local terrain.  Most of these were pit style burials, where slabs of local sedimentary rock were used to form rectangular coffins in the ground, in which the individuals were presumably buried.  On one of the keyhole shaped mounds there was also what appears to be a secondary burial at the neck of the keyhole, where the round and trapezoidal sections meet.  However, we don't know who or even what was buried there in some instances, as most of the bones are no longer extant. Besides the distinctively keyhole shaped tomb, two more kofun in the Niso group caught my attention.  One, which is thought to have been a round tomb, had what appeared to be a small stone chamber, perhaps the last of the kofun in this group to be built, as that is generally a feature of later period kofun.  There was also one that was higher up on the hill, which may also have been a keyhole shaped tomb.  That one struck me, as it would likely have been particularly visible from sea before the current overgrown forest  appeared.  There are also plenty of other kofun to go searching for, though some might be a little more impressive than others.  In the next episode, when we talk about the island of Iki, we'll explore that ancient kingdom's much larger collection of kofun. After the mention of Tsushima in the Weizhi in the third century, there is a later story, from about the 6th century, involving Tsushima in the transmission of Buddhism.  This story isn't in the Nihon Shoki and was actually written down much later, so take that as you will.  According to this account, the Baekje envoys who transmitted the first Buddha image to Japan stopped for a while on Tsushima before proceeding on to the Yamato court.  While they were there, the monks who were looking after the image built a small building in which to conduct their daily rituals, effectively building the first Buddhist place of worship in the archipelago.  A temple was later said to have been built on that spot, and in the mid-15th century it was named Bairinji. While the narrative is highly suspect, there is some evidence that the area around Bairinji was indeed an important point on the island.  Prior to the digging of the two channels to connect the east and west coasts, the area near Bairinji, known as Kofunakoshi, or the small boat portage, was the narrowest part of Tsushima, right near the middle, where Aso Bay and Mitsuura Bay almost meet.  We know that at least in the 9th century this is where envoys would disembark  from one ship which had brought them from the archipelago, and embark onto another which would take them to the continent, and vice versa. Likewise, their goods would be carried across the narrow strip of land. This was like a natural barrier and an ideal location for an official checkpoint, and in later years Bairinji temple served as this administrative point, providing the necessary paperwork for crews coming to and from Japan, including the various Joseon dynasty missions in the Edo period. Why this system of portage and changing ships, instead of just sailing around?  Such a system was practical for several reasons.  For one, it was relatively easy to find Tsushima from the mainland.  Experienced ships could sail there, transfer cargo to ships experienced with the archipelago and the Seto Inland Sea, and then return swiftly to Korea.  Furthermore, this system gave Yamato and Japan forewarning, particularly of incoming diplomatic missions.  No chance mistaking ships for an invasion or pirates of some kind, as word could be sent ahead and everything could be arranged in preparation for the incoming mission.  These are details that are often frustratingly left out of many of the early accounts, but there must have been some logistics to take care of things like this. Whether or not Bairinji's history actually goes back to 538, it does have claim to some rather ancient artifacts, including a 9th century Buddha image from the Unified, or Later, Silla period as well as 579 chapters of the Dai Hannya Haramitta Kyo, or the Greater Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, from a 14th century copy.  These were actually stolen from the temple in 2014, but later recovered.  Other statues were stolen two years previously from other temples on Tsushima, which speaks to some of the tensions that still exist between Korea and Japan.  Claims were made that the statues had originally been stolen by Japanese pirates, or wakou, from Korea and brought to Japan, so the modern-day thieves were simply righting an old wrong.  However, Korean courts eventually found that the items should be returned to Japan, though there were those who disagreed with the ruling.  This is an example of the ongoing tensions that can sometimes make study of inter-strait history a bit complex. More concrete than the possible location of a theoretical early worship structure are the earthworks of Kaneda fortress.  This is a mid-7th century fort, created by Yamato to defend itself from a presumed continental invasion.  We even have mention of it in the Nihon Shoki.  It appears to have been repaired in the late 7th century, and then continued to be used until some time in the 8th century, when it was abandoned, seeing as how the invasion had never materialized, and no doubt maintaining the defenses on top of a mountain all the way out on Tsushima would have been a costly endeavor. Over time the name “Kaneda” was forgotten, though the stone and earthworks on the mountain gave the site the name “Shiroyama”, or Castle Mountain, at least by the 15th century.  In the Edo period, scholars set out trying to find the Kaneda fortress mentioned in the Nihon Shoki, and at one point identified this with an area known as Kanedahara, or Kaneda Fields, in the modern Sasu district, on the southwest coast of Tsushima.  However, a scholar named Suyama Don'ou identified the current mountaintop site, which has generally been accepted as accurate.  The earthworks do appear to show the kind of Baekje-style fortifications that Yamato built at this time, which took advantage of the natural features of the terrain.  These fortresses, or castles, were more like fortified positions—long walls that could give troops a secure place to entrench themselves.  They would not have had the impressive donjon, or tenshukaku, that is the most notable feature of of later Japanese and even European castles. Most of the Baekje style castles in Japan are primarily earthworks—for example the Demon's castle in modern Okayama.  Kaneda is unique, though, with about 2.8 kilometers of stone walls, most of which are reportedly in quite good condition.  There were three main gates and remains of various buildings have been determined from post-holes uncovered on the site.  There is a name for the top of the mountain, Houtateguma, suggesting that there may have once been some kind of beacon tower placed there with a light that could presumably be used to signal to others, but no remains have been found. The defensive nature of the position is also attested to in modern times.  During the early 20th century, the Japanese military placed batteries on the fortress, and an auxiliary fort nearby.  These constructions damaged some of the ancient walls, but this still demonstrates Tsushima's place at the edge of Japan and the continent, even into modern times. For all that it is impressive, I have to say that we regrettably did not make it to the fortress, as it is a hike to see everything, and our time was limited.  If you do go, be prepared for some trekking, as this really is a fortress on a mountain, and you need to park and take the Kaneda fortress trail up.   Moving on from the 8th century, we have evidence of Tsushima in written records throughout the next several centuries, but there isn't a lot clearly remaining on the island from that period—at least not extant buildings.  In the records we can see that there were clearly things going on, and quite often it wasn't great for the island.  For instance, there was the Toi Invasion in the 11th century, when pirates—possibly Tungusic speaking Jurchen from the area of Manchuria—invaded without warning, killing and taking people away as slaves.  It was horrific, but relatively short-lived, as it seems that the invaders weren't intent on staying. Perhaps a more lasting impression was made by the invasions of the Mongols in the 13th century.  This is an event that has been hugely impactful on Japan and Japanese history.  The first invasion in 1274, the Mongols used their vassal state of Goryeo to build a fleet of ships and attempted to cross the strait to invade Japan.  The typical narrative talks about how they came ashore at Hakata Bay, in modern Fukuoka, and the Kamakura government called up soldiers from across the country to their defense.  Not only that, but monks and priests prayed for divine intervention to protect Japan.  According to the most common narrative, a kamikaze, or divine wind, arose in the form of a typhoon that blew into Hakata Bay and sank much of the Mongol fleet. That event would have ripple effects throughout Japanese society.  On the one hand, the Mongols brought new weapons in the form of explosives, and we see changes in the arms of the samurai as their swords got noticeably beefier, presumably to do better against similarly armored foes.  The government also fortified Hakata Bay, which saw another attack in 1281, which similarly failed. Though neither attempted invasion succeeded, both were extremely costly.  Samurai who fought for their country expected to get rewarded afterwards, and not just with high praise.  Typically when samurai fought they would be richly rewarded by their lord with gifts taken from the losing side, to include land and property.  In the case of the Mongols, however, there was no land or property to give out.  This left the Kamakura government in a bit of a pickle, and the discontent fomented by lack of payment is often cited as one of the key contributors to bringing down the Kamakura government and leading to the start of the Muromachi period in the 14th century. The invasions didn't just appear at Hakata though.  In 1274,  after the Mongol fleet first left Goryeo on the Korean Peninsula, they landed first at Tsushima and then Iki, following the traditional trade routes and killing and pillaging as they went.  In Tsushima, the Mongol armies arrived in the south, landing at Komoda beach near Sasuura.  Lookouts saw them coming and the So clan hastily gathered up a defense, but it was no use.  The Mongol army established a beachhead and proceeded to spend the next week securing the island. From there they moved on to Iki, the next island in the chain, and on our journey.  Countless men and women were killed or taken prisoner, and when the Mongols retreated after the storm, they brought numerous prisoners back with them.  Although the Mongols had been defeated, they were not finished with their plans to annex Japan into their growing empire.  They launched another invasion in 1281, this time with reinforcements drawn from the area of the Yangtze river, where they had defeated the ethnic Han Song dynasty two years prior.  Again, they landed at Tsushima, but met fierce resistance—the government had been preparing for this fight ever since the last one.  Unfortunately, Tsushima again fell under Mongol control, but not without putting up a fight.  When the Mongols were again defeated, they left the island once again, this time never to return. If you want to read up more on the events of the Mongol Invasion, I would recommend Dr. Thomas Conlan's book, “No Need for Divine Intervention”.  It goes into much more detail than I can here. These traumatic events have been seared into the memories of Tsushima and the nearby island of Iki. Even though both islands have long since rebuilt, memories of the invasion are embedded in the landscape of both islands, and it is easy to find associated historical sites or even take a dedicated tour.   In 2020, the events of the invasion of Tsushima were fictionalized into a game that you may have heard of called Ghost of Tsushima.  I won't get into a review of the game—I haven't played it myself—but many of the locations in the game were drawn on actual locations in Tsushima.  Most, like Kaneda Castle, are fictionalized to a large extent, but it did bring awareness to the island, and attracted a large fan base.  Indeed, when we picked up our rental car, the helpful staff offered us a map with Ghost of Tsushima game locations in case we wanted to see them for ourselves. As I noted, many of the places mentioned in the game are highly fictionalized, as are many of the individuals and groups—after all, the goal is to play through and actually defeat the enemies, and just getting slaughtered by Mongols and waiting for them to leave wouldn't exactly make for great gameplay.  Shrines offer “charms” to the user and so finding and visiting all of the shrines in the in-game world becomes a player goal. And so when fans of the game learned that the torii gate of Watatsumi Shrine, one of the real-life iconic shrines in Tsushima, was destroyed by a typhoon in September of 2020, about a month after the game was released, they came to its aid and raised over 27 million yen to help restore the torii gates.  A tremendous outpouring from the community. And while you cannot visit all of the locations in the game, you can visit Watazumi Shrine, with its restored torii gates that extend into the water. Watatsumi Shrine itself has some interesting, if somewhat confusing, history.  It is one of two shrines on Tsushima that claim to be the shrine listed in the 10th-century Engi Shiki as “Watatsumi Shrine”.  This is believed to have been the shrine to the God of the Sea, whose palace Hiko Hoho-demi traveled down to in order to find his brother's fishhook—a story noted in the Nihon Shoki and which we covered in episode 23.  Notwithstanding that most of that story claims it was happening on the eastern side of Kyushu, there is a local belief that Tsushima is actually the place where that story originated. The popular shrine that had its torii repaired is popularly known as Watatsumi Shrine, today.  The other one is known as Kaijin  Shrine, literally translating to the Shrine of the Sea God, and it is also known as Tsushima no kuni no Ichinomiya; That is to say the first, or primary, shrine of Tsushima.  Some of the confusion may come as it appears that Kaijin shrine was, indeed, the more important of the two for some time.  It was known as the main Hachiman shrine in Tsushima, and may have been connected with a local temple as well.  It carries important historical records that help to chart some of the powerful families of Tsushima, and also claims ownership of an ancient Buddhist image from Silla that was later stolen.  In the 19th century it was identified as the Watatsumi Shrine mentioned in the Engi Shiki, and made Toyotama Hime and Hikohohodemi the primary deities worshipped at the shrine, replacing the previous worship of Hachiman. Shrines and temples can be fascinating to study, but can also be somewhat tricky to understand, historically.  Given their religious nature, the founding stories of such institutions can sometimes be rather fantastical, and since they typically aren't written down until much later, it is hard to tell what part of the story is original and what part has been influenced by later stories, like those in the Nihon Shoki or the Kojiki. Another interesting example of a somewhat unclear history is that of the Buddhist temple, Kokubun-ji.  Kokubunji are provincial temples, originally set up inthe decree of 741 that had them erected across the archipelago, one in each province at the time, in an attempt to protect the country from harm,  Knowing the location of a Kokubunji can therefore often tell you something about where the Nara era provincial administration sat, as it would likely have been nearby.  In many cases, these were probably connected to the local elite, as well. This is not quite as simple with Tsushima Kokubun-ji.  While it was originally designated in the decree of 741,  a later decree in 745 stated that the expenses for these temples would come directly out of tax revenues in the provinces, and at that time Tsushima was excluded.  Moreover, the Kokubunji on nearby Iki island was funded by taxes from Hizen province.  So it isn't until 855 that we have clear evidence of an early provincial temple for Tsushima, in this case known as a Tobunji, or Island Temple, rather than a Kokubunji. The location of that early temple is unknown, and it burned down only two years later when Tsushima was attacked by forces from Kyushu.   It is unclear what happened to it in the following centures, but by the 14th or 15th century it was apparently situated in Izuhara town, near the site of what would become Kaneishi Castle.  It was later rebuilt in its current location, on the other side of Izuhara town.  It burned down in the Edo period—all except the gate, which was built in 1807.  This gate is at least locally famous for its age and history.  It was also the site of the guesthouses for the 1811 diplomatic mission from Joseon—the dynasty that followed Koryeo. Those missions are another rather famous part of the history of Tsushima, which, as we've seen, has long been a gateway between the archipelago and the peninsula.  In the Edo period, there were numerous diplomatic missions from the Joseon dynasty to the Tokugawa shogunate, and these grand affairs are often touted in the history of Tsushima, with many locations specifically calling out the island's deep involvement in cross-strait relations.  Relations which, to really understand, we need to probably start with a look at the famous (or perhaps even infamous) Sou clan. The Sou clan became particularly influential in Tsushima in the 13th century.  The local officials, the Abiru clan, who had long been in charge of the island, were declared to be in rebellion against the Dazaifu, and so Koremune Shigehisa was sent to quell them.  In return, he was made Jito, or land steward, under the Shoni clan, who were the Shugo of Chikuzen and Hizen, including the island of Tsushima.  The Sou clan, descendents of the Koremune, ruled Tsushima ever since, first as vassals of the Shoni , but eventually they ran things outright. Thus, Sou Sukekuni was in charge when the Mongols invaded in 1274.  Despite having only 80 or so mounted warriors under his charge, he attempted to defend the island, dying in battle.  Nonetheless, when the Mongols retreated, the Sou family retained their position.  Later, they supported the Ashikaga in their bid to become shogun, and were eventually named the Shugo of Tsushima, a title they kept until the Meiji period. As we've mentioned, despite its size, Tsushima is not the most hospitable of locations.  It is mountainous, with many bays and inlets, making both cross-land travel and agriculture relatively difficult.  And thus the Sou clan came to rely on trade with the continent for their wealth and support.  Although, “trade” might be a bit negotiable. Remember how the early Japanese regularly raided the coast of the peninsula?  It was frequent enough that a term arose—the Wakou, the Japanese invaders, or Japanese pirates.  In fact, the term “wakou” became so synonymous with piracy that almost any pirate group could be labeled as “wakou”, whether Japanese or not.  Some of them that we know about were downright cosmopolitan, with very diverse crews from a variety of different cultures. Given its position, the rough terrain, and myriad bays that could easily hide ships and other such things, Tsushima made a great base for fishermen-slash-pirates to launch from.  Particularly in harsh times, desperate individuals from Tsushima and other islands might take their chances to go and raid the mainland.  In the early 15th century, the new Joseon dynasty had had enough.  They sent an expeditionary force to Tsushima to put an end to the wakou. The expedition came in 1419.  The year before, the head of the Sou clan, Sou Sadashige, had died.  His son, Sou Sadamori, took his place, but had not yet come of age, leaving actual power in the hands of Souda Saemontarou, leader of the Wakou pirates. Eventually the Joseon forces were defeated by the forces of Tsushima, including the wakou.  The Joseon court considered sending another punitive expedition, but it never materialized.  What did eventually happen, though, was, oddly, closer ties between the peninsula and Tsushima.  Sou Sadamori, who grew up in that tumultuous time, worked to repair relationships with the Joseon court, concluding a treaty that that allowed the Sou clan to basically monopolize trade with the Korean peninsula.  Treaty ports on the peninsula began to attract permanent settlements of Japanese merchants, and these “wakan”, or Japanese districts, came nominally under the jurisdiction of the Sou of Tsushima. The Sou clan maintained their place as the intermediaries with the Joseon state through the 16th century.  Messages sent from the Japanese court to Joseon would be sent to the Sou, who would deliver them to the Joseon court, and in turn handle all replies from the peninsula back to the Japanese mainland.  And this over time led them to develop some, shall we say, special techniques to make sure these exchanges were as fruitful as possible.  You see, the treaties with the Joseon court only allowed fifty ships a year from Tsushima to trade with the peninsula.  But since all of the documents flowed through the Sou, they had plenty of time to study the seals of both courts—those of the Joseon kingdom and those of Japan – and have fake seals created for their own ends.  In part through the use of these fake seals, the Sou clan were able to pretend their ships were coming from other people—real or fake—and thus get around the 50 ship per year limit.  They also used them in other ways to try and maintain their position between the two countries. All of this came to a head when the Taikou, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, began to dream of continental conquest.  Hideyoshi, at this point the undeniable ruler of all of Japan, had a bit of an ego—not exactly undeserved, mind you.  His letter to the Joseon king Seongjo, demanding submission, was quite inflammatory, and the Sou clan realized immediately that it would be taken as an insult.  Not only could it jeopardize relations with the continent, it could also jeopardize their own unique status.  Which is why they decided to modify it using what in modern computer hacker terms might be called a man-in-the-middle attack – which, with their fake seal game, they had plenty of experience with. The Sou were able to modify the language in each missive to make the language more acceptable to either side.  They also dragged their feet in the whole matter, delaying things for at least two years   But Hideyoshi's mind was set on conquest.  Specifically, he had ambitions of displacing the Ming dynasty itself, and he demanded that the Joseon court submit and allow the Japanese forces through to face the Ming dynasty.  The Joseon refused to grant his request, and eventually Hideyoshi had enough.  He threatened an invasion of Korea if the Joseon dynasty didn't capitulate to his requests. Throughout this process, the Sou attempted to smooth things over as best they could.  However, even they couldn't forge the words presented by a face-to-face envoy, nor could they put off Hideyoshi's anger forever.  And thus Tsushima became one of the launching off points for the Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592 and again in 1597.  Tsushima, along with nearby Iki, would have various castles built to help supply the invading forces.  One such castle was the Shimizuyama-jo, overlooking the town of Izuhara.  Some of the walls and earthworks can still be seen up on the mountain overlooking the town, and  there are trails up from the site of Kaneishi castle, down below.  Both of these invasions ultimately failed, though not without a huge loss of life and destruction on the peninsula—a loss that is still felt, even today. The second and final invasion ended in 1598.  Both sides were exhausted and the Japanese were losing ground, but the true catalyst, unbeknownst to those on the continent, was the death of Hideyoshi.  The Council of Regents, a group of five daimyo appointed to rule until Hideyoshi's son, Hideyori, came of age kept Hideyoshi's death a secret to maintain morale until they could withdraw from the continent. With the war over, the Sou clan took the lead in peace negotiations with the Joseon court, partly in an attempt to reestablish their position and their trade.  In 1607, after Tokugawa had established himself and his family as the new shogunal line, the Sou continued to fake documents to the Joseon court, and then to fake documents right back to the newly established bakufu so that their previous forgeries wouldn't be uncovered.  This got them in a tight spot.  In the early 1600s, one Yanagawa Shigeoki had a grudge to settle with Sou Yoshinari, and so he went and told the Bakufu about the diplomatic forgeries that the Sou had committed, going back years.  Yoshinari was summoned to Edo, where he was made to answer the allegations by Shigeoki.  Sure enough, it was proven that the Sou had, indeed, been forging seals and letters, but after examination, Tokugawa Iemitsu, the third Tokugawa Shogun, decided that they had not caused any great harm—in fact, some of their meddling had actually helped, since they knew the diplomatic situation with the Joseon court better than just about anyone else, and they clearly were incentivized to see positive relations between Japan and Korea.  As such, despite the fact that he was right, Yanagawa Shigeoki was exiled, while the Sou clan was given a slap on the wrist and allowed to continue operating as the intermediaries with the Joseon court. There was one caveat, however:  The Sou clan would no longer be unsupervised.  Educated monks from the most prestigious Zen temples in Kyoto, accredited as experts in diplomacy, would be dispatched to Tsushima to oversee the creation of diplomatic documents and other such matters, bringing the Sou clan's forgeries to a halt. Despite that, the Sou clan continued to facilitate relations with the peninsula, including some twelve diplomatic missions from Korea: the Joseon Tsuushinshi.  The first was in 1607, to Tokugawa Hidetada, and these were lavish affairs, even more elaborate than the annual daimyo pilgrimages for the sankin-kotai, or alternate attendance at Edo.  The embassies brought almost 500 people, including acrobats and other forms of entertainment.  Combined with their foreign dress and styles, it was a real event for people whenever they went. Today, these Tsuushinshi are a big draw for Korean tourists, and just about anywhere you go—though especially around Izuhara town—you will find signs in Japanese, Korean, and English about locations specifically associated with these missions. And in years past, they've even reenacted some of the processions and ceremonies. Speaking of Izuhara, this was the castle town from which the Sou administered Tsushima.  Banshoin temple was the Sou family temple, and contains the graves of many members of the Sou family.  In 1528, the Sou built a fortified residence in front of Banshoin, and eventually that grew into the castle from which they ruled Tsushima.  Today, only the garden and some of the stone walls remain.  The yagura atop the main gate has been rebuilt, but mostly it is in ruins.  The Tsushima Museum sits on the site as well.  Nearby there is also a special museum specifically dedicated to the Tsuushinshi missions. Izuhara town itself is an interesting place.  Much of what you see harkens back to the Edo period.  Much like Edo itself, the densely packed wood and paper houses were a constant fire hazard, and there were several times where the entire town burned to the ground.  As such they began to institute firebreaks in the form of stone walls which were placed around the town to help prevent fire from too quickly spreading from one house to the next.  This is something that was instituted elsewhere, including Edo, but I've never seen so many extant firewalls before, and pretty soon after you start looking for them, you will see them everywhere. The area closest to the harbor was an area mostly for merchants and similar working class people, and even today this can be seen in some of the older buildings and property layouts.  There are also a fair number of izakaya and various other establishments in the area.  Further inland you can find the old samurai district, across from the Hachiman shrine.  The houses and the gates in that area are just a little bit nicer.  While many modern buildings have gone up in the town, you can still find traces of the older buildings back from the days of the Sou clan and the Korean envoys. Today, Izuhara is perhaps the largest town on Tsushima, but that isn't saying much—the population of the entire island is around 31,000 people, only slightly larger than that of nearby Iki, which is only about one fifth the size of Tsushuma in land area.  From Izuhara, you can catch a ferry to Iki or all the way to Hakata, in Fukuoka.  You can also always take a plane as well. Before leaving Tsushima, I'd like to mention one more thing—the leopard cat of Tsushima, the Yamaneko.  This has become something of a symbol in Tsushima, but unfortunately it is critically endangered, at least on the island itself.  It is all but gone from the southern part of Tsushima—human encroachment on its habitat has been part of the issue, but so has the introduction of domesticated cats.  The yamaneko itself is about the size of a typical housecat, and might be mistaken for one, though it has a very distinctive spotted appearance.  Domesticated cats have been shown to outcompete their wild cousins, while also passing on harmful diseases, which also affect the population.  Just about everywhere you go you'll see signs and evidence of this special cat. There is also a breeding program in the north if you want to see them for yourself. Even the small Tsushima Airport is named Yamaneko Airport, and the single baggage claim features a whole diorama of little plush leopard cats wearing traditional clothing and waving hello to new arrivals. If you like rugged coastlines, fascinating scenery, and the odd bit of history thrown in, might I suggest taking a look at Tsushima, the border island between Japan and Korea. We only had a few days, but it was a truly wonderful experience.  Next up we caught the ferry to Iki island, the site of the ancient Iki-koku, possibly represented by the Yayoi era Harunotsuji site.  Of all the places I've been so far, this is second only to Yoshinogari in the work and reconstruction they've done.  They've even discovered what they believe to be an ancient dock or boat launch.  But we'll cover that next week, as we continue on our self-guided Gishiwajinden tour. Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support. 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.

An account of our recent tour of the sites mentioned in the Gishiwajinden, which is to say the Japanese portion of the Weizhi.  This episode we talk about our visit to Gimhae, site of ancient Geumgwan Gaya. For more see our podcast blog:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcasts/episode-geumgwangaya Rough Transcript   Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is Gishiwajinden Self-Guided Tour: Geumgwan Gaya. For the next several episodes we are taking a bit of a detour from the narrative of the Chronicles.  After all, with the coup of 645 that we covered a couple of episodes ago, we are about to dive into the period known as “Taika” or “Great Change”.  Prince Naka no Oe and Nakatomi no Kamako were not just assassins—they had plans that went beyond just cutting the head off the powerful Soga house.  It's an eventful time, with a lot of changes, though some of those would take time to really come to fruition and before I get into all of that there is a bit more research that I want to do to figure out the best way to lay that out for you.  And so I figured we would take a little detour for a few episodes, to share with you a special trip that Ellen and I recently took, reproducing – in a modern way – some of the earliest accounts we have about crossing over to the archipelago: the Gishiwajinden, the Japanese section of the Weizhi.  We talked about this chronicle back in episode 11: it describes all the places one would stop when leaving the continent, from kingdoms on the peninsula and across the smaller islands of the archipelago before landing in what we currently call Kyushu. And Ellen and I did just that: we sailed across the Korean straits, from the site of the ancient kingdom of Gaya in modern Gimhae, to the islands of Tsushima and Iki, then on to modern Karatsu and Fukuoka, passing through what is thought to be the ancient lands of Matsuro, Ito, and Na.  It was an incredibly rewarding journey, and includes plenty of archaeological sites spanning the Yayoi to Kofun periods—as well as other sites of historical interest.  It also gets you out to some areas of Japan and Korea that aren't always on people's list, but probably should be.  So for this first episode about our “Gishiwajinden Jido Toua” – our Gishiwajinden Self-Guided Tour – we'll talk about the historical sites in Gimhae, the site of ancient Geumgwan Gaya, but also some of the more modern considerations for visiting, especially on your own. By the way, a big thank you to one of our listeners, Chad, who helped inspire this trip.  He was living on Iki for a time and it really made me think about what's out there. This episode I'll be focusing on the first place our journey took us, Gimhae, South Korea.  Gimhae is a city on the outskirts of modern Pusan, and home to Pusan's international airport, which was quite convenient.  This is thought to be the seat of the ancient kingdom of Gaya, also known as “Kara” in the old records.  In the Weizhi we are told of a “Guyahan”, often assumed to be “Gaya Han”, which is to say the Han—one of the countries of the peninsula—known as Guya or Gaya.  This is assumed to mean Gaya, aka Kara or Garak, and at that time it wasn't so much a kingdom as it was a confederation of multiple polities that shared a similar material culture and locations around the Nakdong river.  This is the area that we believe was also referenced as “Byeonhan” in some of the earliest discussions of the Korean peninsula. By the way, while I generally believe this area was referred to as “Kara”, “Gara”, or even “Garak”, originally, the modern Korean reading of the characters used is “Gaya”, and since that is what someone will be looking for, that's what I'll go with. History of the Korean peninsula often talks about the “Three Kingdoms” period, referencing the kingdoms of Baekje, Silla, and Goguryeo.  However, that is a very simplistic view of the ancient history of the archipelago.  Numerous small polities existed without a clear, persistent overlord outside of those three larger polities, and even they were not always quite as grand as the later histories would like to make them out to be. Gaya is often referred to as the “Gaya Confederacy” by modern historians, at least for most of its existence, and refers to a number of polities including Daegaya, Ara, etc., and may also include “Nimna”, though where exactly that was is a topic of great debate, with some claiming that it was just another name for what later was known as Geumgwan Gaya, and other suggestions that it was its own polity, elsewhere on the coast.  This isn't helped by the nationalist Japanese view that “Nimna” was also the “Mimana Nihonfu”, or the Mimana controlled by Japan, noted in the Nihon Shoki, and used as the pretext for so many of the aggressions perpetrated on the continent by Japan. These all appear to have been individual polities, like small city-states, which were otherwise joined by a common culture. Although the Samguk Yusa mentions “King Suro” coming in 42 CE, for most of its history there wasn't really a single Gaya state as far as we can tell.  It is possible that towards the 5th and early 6th centuries, Geumgwan Gaya had reached a certain level of social complexity and stratification that it would classify as a “kingdom”, but these definitions are the kinds of things that social scientists would argue about endlessly. Evidence for a “Kingdom” comes in part from the way that Geumgwan Gaya is referenced in the Samguk Sagi and other histories, particularly in how its ruling elite is referred to as the royal ancestors of the Gimhae Kim clan.  Proponents also point to the elaborate graves, a large palace site (currently under excavation and renovation), the rich grave goods found in the tombs thought to be those of the royal elites, etc.  Other scholars are not so sure, however, and even if there was a nominal kingdom, it likely did not last very long before coming under the rule of Silla in the 6th century. Unlike the other kingdoms—Baekje, Silla, and Goguryeo; the “Samguk”, or three countries, of the “Samguk Sagi”—Gaya does not have its own record in the histories.  The Samguk Yusa, which is of interest but also problematic in that it was clearly more about telling the miraculous tales of Buddhism than a strictly factual history, does have a bit about Gaya.  The author of the Samguk Yusa, the monk  Ilyeon, claimed that the information there was pulled from a no longer extant record called the Gayakgukki, or Record of the Gaya Kingdom, but the actual stories are not enough to tell us everything that happened.  Most of what we know comes from members of the Gaya Confederacy popping up in the records of other nations, including Baekje, Silla, Goguryeo, and Yamato.  For example, there are references in the Gwangaetto Stele from the 5th century, as well as plenty of references in the Nihon Shoki and the records in the Samguk Sagi.  This is a little bit better than some of the other groups mentioned as being on the Korean peninsula that are often referred to only one time before being completely forgotten. For us, the importance of Gaya is its links with Yamato.  Although it would seem that Nimna, in particular, had close ties with Yamato it is noteworthy that the Japanese word for the continent and things that would come from there—including the later Tang dynasty—is “Kara”.  “Kara-fu” generally refers to something that comes from China, but only because those things originally came through the peninsula and through Kara, or Gaya.  The port on Kyushu where the goods likely arrived before continuing up to modern Fukuoka is even today known as “Karatsu”, or “Kara Port”.  This lends credence to the idea that Nimna was likely at least a member of the Gaya confederacy. There are also deep similarities in many material items found in the peninsula and in the area of the Nakdong peninsula, including pottery, armor, horse gear, etc.  At the very least this indicates a close trading relationship, and combined with the account in the Weizhi, emphasizes the idea that this was likely the jumping off point for missions to the archipelago and vice versa. Perhaps more controversial is the idea that at least some members of the Gaya Confederacy, or the Byeonhan cultural group before it, may have been speakers of some kind of proto-Japonic.  There are also some that suggest there may have been ethnic Wa on the peninsula at an early point as well.  However, I would note that the Weizhi refers to this area specifically as being part of the “Han”, and that it was the jumping off point to find the lands of the Wa and eventually the lands of Yamato (or Yamatai), so make of that what you will.  All of this is well after the introduction of rice cultivation in Japan, focusing on the 3rd century onward, roughly corresponding to what we think of as the Kofun Period in Japan, and which was also a period of ancient mound-building on the Korean peninsula as well. All that aside, it is clear that Gaya was an important part of the makeup of the early Korean peninsula, and that much of that history is on display in modern Gimhae. Gimhae is one of plenty of places on the Korean peninsula for anyone with an interest in ancient history.  Besides the various museums, like the National Museum in Seoul, there are sites like Gyeongju, the home of the tombs of the Silla kings and the ancient Silla capital, and much more. Gimhae itself is home to the Royal Gaya Tombs, as well as archaeological remnants of an ancient settlement that was probably at least one of the early Gaya polities.  As I noted, Gimhae is more accurately the site of what is known in later historical entries as Geumgwan Gaya.  The earliest record of the Weizhi just says something like “Gü-lja-han” which likely means “Gaya Han”, or Gaya of Korea, referring at the time to the three Han of Mahan, Jinhan, and Byeonhan.  That may or may not have referred to this particular place, as there are other Gaya sites along the coast and in the upper reaches of the Nakdong river.  However, given its placement on the shore, the site at Gimhae seems to have a good claim to be the point mentioned in the Wei Chronicles, which is why we also chose it as the first site on our journey. The characters for “Gimhae” translate into something like “Gold Sea”, but it seems to go back to the old name:  Geumgwan, as in Geumgwan Gaya.  It is part of the old Silla capital region.  “Geum” uses the same character as “Kim”, meaning “Gold” or “Metal”.  This is also used in the popular name “Kim”, which is used by several different lineage groups even today.  The “Sea” or “Ocean” character may refer to Gimhae's position near the ocean, though I don't know how relevant that was when the name “Gimhae” came into common usage. The museums and attractions around Gimhae largely focus on the royal tombs of the Geumgwan Gaya kingdom, which in 2023 were placed, along with seven other Gaya tomb sites, on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites.  Since they're so newly added, we did not see the kind of omnipresent UNESCO branding that we are used to seeing elsewhere, such as Nikko Toshogu or Angkor Wat, but taxi drivers certainly knew the UNESCO site and museum. For anyone interested in these tombs and in Gaya's early history, there are two museums you likely want to visit.  First off is the National Museum, which covers a wide swath of history, with tons of artifacts, well laid out to take you through the history of the Gaya Confederacy, from early pre-history times through at least the 7th century.  There is also a separate museum that specifically covers the Daeseong-dong tombs, which lay upon a prominent ridge on the western side of the city, north of a Gaya era settlement with a huge shell midden found at Bonghwang-dong, to the south, nearby an ongoing excavation of a potential palace site. These museums have some excellent displays, including pottery, metalwork, horse gear, armor, and even parts of an ancient boat.  As I noted earlier, these show a lot of similarity to items across the strait in the archipelago, though it is clear that Gaya had a lot more iron than their neighbors —in fact, they had so much that they would often line the bottom of tombs with iron ingots.  The displays emphasize that Gaya was really seen as a kind of ironworking center for the region, both the peninsula and the archipelago. The tombs, likewise, have some similarity to those in the archipelago—though not in the distinctive, keyhole shape.  Early tombs, from the 1st to 2nd century, were simply wooden coffins dug in a pit with a mound on top.  This became a wooden lined pit, where bodies and grave goods could be laid out, and then, in the 3rd century, they added subordinate pits just for the various grave goods.  In the 5th century this transitioned to stone-lined pit burial, and in the 6th century they changed to the horizontal entry style stone chamber tomb, before they finally stopped building them.  These seem to be similar to what we see in Silla, with wooden chamber tombs giving way to the horizontal entry style around the 5th and 6th centuries.  Meanwhile, Baekje and Goguryeo appear to have had horizontal style tombs for some time, and that may have been linked to Han dynasty style tombs in the area of the old Han commanderies—which I suspect might have spread with the old families of Han scribes and officials that were absorbed into various polities.  It is interesting to see both the similarities and differences between Gaya and Wa tombs in this period, particularly the transition to the horizontal entry style tombs, which I suspect indicates an outside cultural influence, like that of Silla—something that would also influence the burials in the archipelago.  At first, in the 4th to 5th centuries, we just see these style tombs starting to show up in Kyushu, particularly in the area of modern Fukuoka—one of the areas that we will hit at the end of this journey from the peninsula to the archipelago.  That may be from contact with Baekje or Goguryeo, or even from some other point, it is hard to tell.  By the 6th century, though, just as Silla and Gaya were doing, it seems that all of the archipelago was on board with this style of internal tomb structure. Another tomb style you can find in Gimhae is the dolmen.  These are megalithic—or giant rock—structures where typically a roof stone is held up by two or more other large stones.  In some cases these may have been meant as an above-ground monument, much like a structure such as Stonehenge.  On the other hand, in some cases they are the remains of a mound, where the mound itself has worn away.  Unfortunately, there was not as much information on them—it seems that dolmens were originally used before the mounded tomb period, but just what was a free-standing dolmen and what was an internal mound structure exposed by the elements I'm not sure I could say. If you visit the Daeseong-dong tombs, one of the things you may notice is the apparent lack of a tomb mound.  The attached museum explains much of this, though, in that over time the wooden pit-style tombs would often collapse in on themselves.  That, plus erosion and continued human activity in an area would often mean that, without upkeep, there would eventually be no mound left, especially if it wasn't particularly tall to start with. In an example where something like this might have happened, there is at least one tomb in the group that was clearly dug down into a previous burial chamber.  The excavators must have realized they were digging into another tomb, given that they would have pulled up numerous artifacts based on what was later found at the site, but they still carried on with the new tomb, apparently not having any concern for the previous one.  After all, there was only so much room up on the ridge for burials, at least towards the later periods.  This pair of “interlocking” tombs is housed inside a building with a viewing gallery, so you can see their layout and how the grave goods would have been arranged in period. One tomb that apparently kept a mound of some kind would appear to be that attributed to King Suro.  King Suro is the legendary founder of Geumgwan Gaya, mentioned in the 13th century Samguk Yusa, which was using an older record of the Gaya Kingdom as their source.  The area where the tomb is found is said to match up with the description in the Samguk Yusa, but I could find no definitive evidence of a previous tomb or what style it was—let alone the question of whether or not it was the tomb of King Suro of Geumgwan Gaya.  It was still a very impressive compound, though it seems most of the buildings are likely from a much more recent era. I suspect that King Suro remained an important story for the Gimhae Kim clan.  That clan, as mentioned earlier, claimed descent from the Kings of Geumgwan Gaya, of whom King Suro was supposedly the first. It is noteworthy that the Kim family of Geumgwan Gaya, known as the Gimhae Kim clan, was granted a high rank in Silla because they claimed descent from the “Kings” of Geumgwan Gaya.  As such Munmyeong, the sister of Kim Yusin, the general who helped Silla take over the peninsula, was apparently considered an appropriate consort to King Muyeol, and her son would become King Munmu.  This brought the Gimhae Kim clan into the Gyeongju Kim clan of Silla. Kim Busik, who put together the Samguk Sagi, was a member of the Gyeongju Kim clan, which claimed descent from those same kings.  He had plenty of reason to make sure that the Silla Kings looked good, and may have also had reason to prop up the leaders of Geumgwan Gaya as well, given the familial connections.  That said, there do seem to be some impressive tombs with rich grave goods, so there is that. In 1580 we are told that Governor Kim Heo-su, who counted himself a descendant of the Gimhae Kim clan, found the tomb of King Suro and repaired it, building a stone altar, a stone platform, and a tomb mound.  It is unclear from what I can find, though, just what he “found” and how it was identified with what was in the Samguk Yusa.  Even if there was something there, how had *that* been identified?  There seems to be plenty of speculation that this is not the actual resting place of the legendary king, Kim Suro, but it is certainly the place where he is worshipped.  The tomb was apparently expanded upon in later centuries, and today it is quite the facility, though much of it seems relatively recent, and hard to connect with the actual past. More important for that is probably what was found at Bonghwang-dong.  On this ridge, south of the tomb ridge, were found traces of buildings including pit style dwellings along with post-holes, indicating raised structures of some sort.  Today you can go and see interpreted reconstructions, based in part on some pottery models that had also been found from around that period.  Reconstructed buildings sit on either side of a hill, which is the main feature of a modern park.  It is a good place to get a sense of what was around that area, and you can hike to the top of the hill, which isn't that difficult a journey.  The trees do obstruct the view, somewhat, but you get a great sense for what a community there might have been like.  As I mentioned before, there is also a large excavation being carried out on what is believed to be some kind of royal palace structure, but unfortunately we likely won't know much more until later. Also next to the settlement is a giant shell mound.  We are talking over a football field long and several stories high of shells and bone, along with discarded pottery and other such things.  Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the contents of the shell mound appear to have been mixed at various stages, but it is still impressive, and they have an excellent display where you can see the mound cut away to demonstrate what a shell mound might look like. The shell mound apparently existed from the 1st to the 4th centuries.  This feels odd to me, given that I normally think of shell mounds as more connected to Jomon and similar sites, but it also makes sense that a community—particularly one with easy access to the sea—would have a lot of shells and it isn't like they had trash collectors coming to take away their garbage. Which brings me to another point:  Back in its heyday, Geumgwan Gaya was clearly on or very near the sea.  In modern times you can certainly see islands off the coast from the tops of some of these hills—and from the top of a mountain one might even make out Tsushima on a clear day.  However, today that ocean is several miles out. Back in the time of the Geumgwan Gaya, however, things were likely different.  The Nakdong river would have emptied out to the east into a large bay, with Geumgwan Gaya sitting comfortably at its head, with mountains on three sides and the ocean on the fourth.  This would have made it a great as a port town, as it not only had access to the Korean straits and the Pacific Ocean, but it also sat at the head of the river that connected many of the sites believed to be related to the ancient Gaya confederacy. Over time, however, the bay silted up, and/or sea levels dropped, and the area that would become the heart of modern Gimhae would find itself farther and farther away from the ocean, through no fault of their own.  That must have put a damper on their trade relationships, and I can't help but wonder if that was one of the reasons they eventually gave in to Silla and joined them. With its place at the head of the Nakdong river, Silla's control of Geumgwan Gaya likely made the rest of the Gaya polities' absorption much more likely, as most of the Gaya polities appear to have been laid out around the Nakdong river.  That would have been their lifeline to the ocean and maritime trade routes.  Without a cohesive state, they may not have been able to resist the more organized and coordinated armies of groups like Silla and Baekje, eventually falling under Silla's domain. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much online in English about Gimhae beyond the ancient connection to Geumgwan Gaya.  Specifically, I didn't find a lot of clear historical information about the city after coming under Silla rule.  It was apparently one of the “capitals” of the Silla region under Later or Unified Silla.  Though Silla tried to form the people of the three Han of Baekje, Goguryeo, and Silla into a unified state, its central authority would eventually break down.  Baekje and Goguryeo would be briefly reconstituted before the Later Goguryeo throne was usurped by a man who would be known as Taejo, from Gaesong.  He would lead the first fully successful unification effort, and from the 10th century until the 14th the state was known as “Goryeo”, from which we get the modern name of “Korea”.  Goryeo started in Gaesong, but also rebuilt the ancient Goguryeo capital at Pyongyang, both up in what is today North Korea.  It eventually came under the thumb of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and when that dynasty was overthrown by the Ming, Goryeo experienced its own instability, resulting in the Joseon dynasty, which moved the capital to the area of modern Seoul.  Given modern tensions between North and South Korea, I suspect that there is a fair bit of politics still wrapped up in the historiography of these periods, especially with each modern state having as their capitals one of the ancient capital city sites. As for Gimhae, I have very little information about the city during the Goryeo period.  Towards the end of the 14th century, we do see signs of possible conflict, though: There was a fortress built on the nearby hill, called Bunsanseong, in about 1377, though some claim that an older structure was there since the time of the old Gaya kingdom, which would make sense, strategically.  This fortress was severely damaged during Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea in the late 16th century—a not uncommon theme for many historical sites on the peninsula, unfortunately—and repaired in 1871.  The walls can still be seen from the city below. Stone walls were placed around the city in 1434 and improved in 1451.  Excavations on the wall were carried out in 2006 and the north gate, which was first renovated in 1666, was restored in 2008.   You can still visit it, north of the international markets, which includes a wet market along with various restaurants offering specialties from around Northeast Asia, including places like Harbin, in China. Near the north gate there is also a Confucian school, or hyanggyo.  The first iteration was probably built during the Goryeo dynasty, but whatever was there in the 16th century was also destroyed during Hideyoshi's invasion.  It would later be rebuilt in 1688 and relocated to the east until it burned down in 1769.  The following year it was rebuilt in its current location, north of the city gate.  The school contains examples of the classrooms along with a central Confucian shrine, and there are some similarities with similar Edo period institutions in Japan, which also based themselves off of a Confucian model. For those interested in more recent history, you may want to check out the Gimhae Folk Life Museum.  This covers some of the more recent folk traditions, clothing, and tools and home goods used up until quite recent times.  It may not be as focused on the ancient history of the area, but it certainly provides some insight into the recent history of the people of Gimhae. Today, Gimhae is a bustling city.  Not quite as big and bustling as Pusan or Seoul, but still quite modern.  You can easily get there by train from Busan or Gimhae International Airport, and there are plenty of options to stay around the city such that you can walk to many of the historical sites. For those used to traveling in Japan, there are both similarities and differences.  Alongside the ubiquitous Seven Eleven chains are the CU chain, formerly known as FamilyMart, and GS25, along with a few others.  Trains are fairly easy to navigate if you know where you want to go, as well – there's a convenient metro line that connects the airport to Gimhae city proper, and has stops right by the museums.  The KTX, the Korean Train eXpress, the high-speed rail, includes a line from Seoul to Busan.  And don't worry, from our experience there are no zombies on the train to- or from- Busan. Of course, in Korea they use Hangul, the phonetic Korean alphabet.  It may look like kanji to those not familiar with the language but it is entirely phonetic.  Modern Korean rarely uses kanji—or hanja, as they call it—though you may see some signs in Japanese or Chinese that will use it here and there.  In general, though, expect things to be in Korean, and there may or may not be English signs.  However, most of the historical sites we visited had decent enough signage that we only occasionally had to pull out the phone for translation assistance, and the museums are quite modern and have translation apps readily available with QR codes you can scan to get an English interpretation. Speaking of phones, make sure that you have one that will work in Korea or consider getting a SIM card when you get in, as you will likely want it for multiple reasons.  That said, a lot of things that travelers rely on won't work in Korea unless you have the Korean version.  For instance, Google Maps will show you where things are but it can't typically navigate beyond walking and public transit directions.  For something more you'll want the Korean app, Naver.  We did okay, for the most part, on Google Maps, but Naver is specifically designed for South Korea. Likewise, hailing a cab can be a bit of a chore.  Don't expect your Uber or Lyft apps to work—you'll need to get a Korean taxi app if you want to call a taxi or you'll need to do it the old fashioned way—call someone up on the telephone or hail one on the streets, which can be a tricky business depending on where you are. On the topic of streets: In Gimhae, many of the streets we were walking on did not have sidewalks, so be prepared to walk along the side of the road.   We didn't have much trouble, but we were very conscious of the traffic. Another note in Gimhae is the food.  Korea is host to a wide variety of foods, and Gimhae can have many options, depending on what you are looking for.  Near our hotel there were traditional Korean restaurants as well as places advertising pizza, Thai, and burgers.  Up in the main market area, you can find a wide variety of food from around Asia.  Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, Nepal, and many more were represented, as well as Russian and Chinese cuisines. That said, our breakfast options were not so bountiful.  Our hotel, which gave us our own private hot tub, like a private onsen, did not serve breakfast, but there were a few cafes around where you could get a drink and a light meal in the morning,  and there were some pork Gukbab places, where you would put cooked rice in a pork bone broth for a hearty and delicious morning meal.  That said, if you waited a little later, there is a Krispy Kreme for those craving donuts, and a few French-inspired Korean bakeries, such as the chain, Tous les Jours, which is always a tasty go-to spot. If you prefer a wider variety of food you can choose to stay in Busan proper, instead.  It isn't that far, and you can take the train over to Gimhae in the morning.  However, I would recommend at least two days to see most of the Gaya related sites, and maybe a third or fourth if you want to chase down everything in the city. There is also an interesting amusement park that we did not get the chance to experience but may be of interest:  the Gimhae Gaya Theme Park.  This appears to be a series of interpretations of different Gaya buildings along with a theme park for kids and adults, including rope bridges, light shows, and some cultural performances.  It looked like it might be fun, but since we had limited time we decided to give it a pass this time around. In Busan, there are many other things to do, including museums, folk villages, and an aquarium along the beach.  Busan station is also conveniently located next to the cruise port, where ships depart daily for Japan.  This includes typical cruise ships, as well as various ferries.  For instance, there is a ferry to Hakata, in Fukuoka city, as well as an overnight ferry that takes you through the Seto Inland sea all the way to Osaka.  For us, however, we had booked the jetfoil to Hitakatsu, on the northern tip of Tsushima island – a very modern version of the Gishiwajinden account of setting sail in a rickety ship. Unfortunately, as we were preparing for our journey, disaster struck—the kind of thing that no doubt befell many who would dare the crossing across the waters.  Strong winds out in the strait were making the water choppy, and it was so bad that they decided to cancel all of the ferries for that day and the next.  It made me think of the old days, when ships would wait at dock as experienced seamen kept their eye on the weather, trying to predict when it would be fair enough to safely make the crossing.  This was not always an accurate prediction, though, since on the open ocean, squalls can blow up suddenly.  In some cases people might wait months to make the crossing. Since we didn't have months, and had a lot to see in Tsushuma, we opted for another, very modern route: we booked airplane tickets and left from Gimhae airport to Fukuoka, where we transitioned to a local prop plane for Tsushima.  You might say: why not just fly to Tsushima? But Tsushima doesn't have an international airport, and only serves Japanese domestic destinations. Hence the detour to Fukuoka, where we went through Japanese immigration and had a very nice lunch while we waited for our second, short flight. Even that was almost cancelled due to the winds at Tsushima, with a disclaimer that the plane might have to turn around if the weather was too bad.  Fortunately, we were able to make it, though coming into Tsushima airport was more than a little hair-raising as the small plane came in over the water and cliffs and dodged some pretty substantial updrafts before touching down on a tiny airstrip. And with that, we made our crossing to Tsushima island.  Or perhaps it is better to call them “islands” now, since several channels have been dug separating the north and south parts of Tsushima.  It wasn't quite how we had planned to get there, but we made it – and that kind of adaptability is very much in keeping with how you had to travel in the old days! One more comment here about the Korean Peninsula and Tsushima:  while we never had a day clear enough, it seems obvious that from a high enough vantage point in Gimhae or Gaya, one could see Tsushima on a clear day.  This is something I had speculated, but as we traveled it became clear.  Tsushima is actually closer to the Korean Peninsula than to Kyushu, a fact that they point out.  And so it was likely visible enough to people who knew what they were looking for. And yet, I imagine being on a small boat, trying to make the journey, it must have been something.  You hopefully had a good navigator, because if you went off in the wrong direction you could end up in the East Sea—known in Japan as the Japan Sea—or worse.    If you kept going you would probably eventually reach the Japanese archipelago, but who knows what might have happened in the meantime.  It is little wonder that ships for the longest time decided to use Tsushima and Iki as stepping stones between the archipelago and the continent. And with that, I think we'll leave it.  From Gimhae and Pusan, we traveled across to Tsushima, which has long been the first point of entry into the archipelago from the continent, often living a kind of dual life on the border.  Tsushima has gotten famous recently for the “Ghost of Tsushima” video game, set on the island during the Mongol Invasion – we haven't played it, but we understand a lot of the landscape was reproduced pretty faithfully. From there we (and the ancient chroniclers) sailed to Iki.  While smaller than Tsushuma, Iki was likely much more hospitable to the Yayoi style of rice farming, and the Harunotsuji site is pretty remarkable. Modern Karatsu, the next stop, is literally the Kara Port, indicating that the area has deep connections to the continent.  It is also the site of some of the oldest rice paddies found on the archipelago, as well as its own fascinating place in later history.  Continuing north along the coast of Kyushu is another area with evidence of ancient Yayoi and Kofun communities in Itoshima, thought to be the ancient country of Ito.  Here you can find some burial mounds, as well as the site where archaeologists found one of the largest bronze mirrors of the ancient archipelago.  Finally, we ended up in Fukuoka, where the seal of the King of Na of Wa was found. We ended our trip in Fukuoka, but the historical trail from Na, or Fukuoka, to quote-unquote “Yamatai” then goes a bit hazy.  As we discussed in an earlier episode, there are different theories about where Yamatai actually was.  There is the Kyushu theory, which suggests that Yamatai is somewhere on Kyushu, with many trying to point to the Yayoi period site of Yoshinogari, though there are plenty of reasons why that particular site is not exactly a good candidate.  Then there are various paths taking you to Honshu, and on to Yamato.  Those are much more controversial, but the path to at least Na seems mostly agreed on, especially since that was largely the path that individuals would follow for centuries onwards, including missions to and from the Tang dynasty, the Mongols during their attempted invasion, and even the various missions from the Joseon dynasty during the Edo period.  Today, modern transportation, such as the airplane, means that most people just go directly to their destination, but there are still plenty of reasons to visit these locations.  It was a lot of fun to sail from place to place and see the next island – or kingdom – emerging on the horizon. Next episode we will talk about Tsushima and give you an idea of what that island has in store for visitors; especially those with an interest in Japanese history. Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support. 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 Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or 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.

You know what time it is Cabalists, it's time for some irreverent nonsense! The gang is back in action and we're getting busy with some of the games we've been playing including Anunnaki Dawn of the Gods, Iki, Mystic Vale, Lands of Galzyr, Oltree Undead and Alive and featuring Last Light designed by our good buddy Roy Cannaday and published by Grey Fox Games. And of course, he is back with another installment of the greatest tabletop gaming News segment in the entire universe. And then the founders get into some short topics submitted by listeners including house ruling, games we were wrong about, and are there any games that are too formidable for us to learn? Last Light Review 01:05:13, News with Tony T 01:38:54, Short Topic Extravaganza 02:49:10