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This episode we look at the Hakuchi era.  Specifically, the implementation of something called the "Equal Fields" system, which seems to be what the court was trying to implement in some of their early Ritsuryo edicts.  And then we'll see why this era is the "Asuka" period and not the "Naniwa" period, despite the grand temple to government erected in that area of ancient Osaka. For more, check out https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-114 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is Episode 114: Public Lands and Remote Work   In the early evening, Karu paced through the halls of the inner palace.  The grand scale of the construction was impressive, and it was built and furnished with the finest materials available.  In all aspects it was the shining jewel.  The center of the Yamato world.  The entire thing still felt new. And yet, for all of that, it now felt strangely empty.  So many of those who had previously graced its halls were only memories.  Karu looked over the halls and wondered:  Was it worth it?    He had worked with his nephew and others to build a Kingdom worthy of the name.  They had instituted reforms to model themselves after the major powers of the day.  They had a built a palace to last the test of time.  This wasn't just another place to be abandoned—this was meant to be the bedrock on which the new State would stand.  It was the center of ritual and of the government. But was it?  The government was more than just buildings.  It was the people who made up the offices and the ministries.  It was the entire royal family.  It was the scholars and the officials, debating just how things should work. What would happen when Karu was gone?  Would this system last the test of time?  Or would it disappear, to be replaced by something new?  For centuries, every sovereign had made a new home for themselves every time the previous sovereign passed away.  Is that what would happen to Karu as well? As the sun set, and darkness set in, Karu could only wonder what the future might hold. So here we are in the Hakuchi era, during the reign of Karu, aka Ame Yorodzu Toyohi, which is to say between the years 650 and 654.  The era of Great Change was now the era of the White Pheasant – listen to our last couple of episodes to understand why -- and all of the changes weve been discussing were starting to really come together.  Front and center of those changes was the Nagara Toyosaki Palace, a physical manifestation of the new bureaucratic system of government that the sovereign, Karu; the Crown Prince, Naka no Oe; and others had put into place.  The work of this government was happening on a stage much grander than anything that had previously been seen in the islands. This was the start of what we know as the Ritsuryo Era, and it was finally coalescing.  In this episode we'll talk about how, in the Hakuchi era, we see the implementation of the continental system known as the “Equal Field System”, and how the bureaucratic government was extended down to the individual household.  This was all part of what we've come to know as the Ritsuryo state, which we talked about back in Episode 108 as we started all of these changes.  We are now seeing the foundations of that new state, and we are several years into its implementation, seeing those early edicts finally starting to bear fruit.All of this, of course, was focused on the seat of government in Naniwa. And yet, spoiler alert, this is not called the “Naniwa Era”.  We are still in what many refer to as the Asuka Era.  So what happened?  Towards the end of the episode we'll talk about what happened as the era came to a close, or at least as much as we know. To kick us off, let's talk about where we stand in the Hakuchi era, and look at the culmination of these early Ritsuryo changes we've been talking about. Whatever else had happened, various good omens, crises, and so on – the work of the government was continuing.  Once again, we see records of various envoys from the continent —and we'll get into the international situation, later—but for now, let's focus on what was going on in the archipelago itself.  Specifically, I want to talk about something called the Equal Field System, another innovation that Karu and his administration introduced to Yamato. The Equal Field System goes back to at least the Northern Wei dynasty, over on the continent, in the late 5th century.  It attempted to solve several issues regarding how the government could make sure that land was being worked—and that the government was also getting its cut.  To that end, let's back up a bit and talk about concepts of public versus private land, and how they apply to Yamato at the time. The concept of “private” land may seem simplistic, as we have an idea of what it means today.  Your “private” land is land you own, of course.  “Public” land belongs to the government.  But in Japan—and in much of East Asia—those concepts weren't necessarily the same.  In many early theories of land ownership, all land belonged to the State—individuals were simply using it.  To a certain degree, even today, land is often held only so long as you have a deed or other proof of ownership that is recognized by the State, but concepts like eminent domain can supercede that ownership. So for our purposes, here, Private land was land where all the produce went to a private individual or private interest,  such as a family—or even a temple or shrine.  If it was truly privately-owned land, then all of the produce of that land went to the owner.  Even if the government technically owned the land, the land could still be considered private, meaning that it wasn't  considered taxable by the government – whoever controlled the land got all the produce. In contrast to that, public land was land where the government was owed some or all of the produce.  It might have been worked by individuals, but was still taxable in part or full.  An early system that goes back to at least the Zhou dynasty was known as the Well Field System.  In this system, land was ideally divided into nine squares.  The eight squares of land on the outside of the square would all be held and worked by private farmers, who were able to keep whatever they produced on the land.  In return, they were to provide labor on the public land in the center, the produce of which went to the State, which could then be stashed away in case of famine or used to help increase the State's coffers and thus pay for other amenities. Of course often it just went into the pockets of various aristocrats.  I also wonder just how much effort was actually put in to working the public land in the Well Field System. That name, by the way, comes from how the whole schematic looked when drawn out.  The hanzi, or kanji, for a “well”—as in a place where you draw water—is much like a modern hashtag mark.  Think two horizontal and two vertical lines, like a tic-tac-toe board.  This comes from the fact that wells were often square or rectangular holes, the sides of which could be reinforced with wood.  At the top, the well frame was often formed with overlapping wooden beams, forming a shape similar to a hashtag.  And so in the Well Field System, the center of the tic-tac-toe board was the public land, and everything else was private.  This system fell apart with the fall of the Zhou during the Summer and Autumn periods, though there were attempts to revive it.  After all, it had been mentioned in the Book of Rites, the Liji, and it was praised by Mengzi—the famous scholar and philosopher we known to the West by his latinized name of  “Mencius”.  As such, it was officially documented as a “good idea” and so there were often attempts to revive it. The Northern Wei, however, took a slightly different approach.  In the late 5th century, they were looking for a way to curb the power of aristocratic families.  Since the Qin dynasty and onwards, they had seen the growth of families accumulating land and thus wealth and power.  These powerful families were both necessary and a threat, as they held the power to prop up or tear down a government.  Farmers would need to rent land from the powerful landowners, paying them a portion of their harvest as rent. To counter this, the Northern Wei instituted the Equal Field system.  Under this system, they claimed government ownership of vast swaths of land and then provided equal parts of that government land to every adult person.  Upon a person's death, their land would revert back to the government, who could then redistribute it to others.  The peasants would then be expected to provide a portion of the harvest as tax—they would provide food-rent for the land, as well as payment in cloth and a set number of days of corvee labor.  The key was that all of this payment was due to the government, and not to private aristocratic families. After the Northern Wei fell, the Equal Field system was reinvigorated by the Sui and Tang dynasties, who extended the system across their territories—or at least within the Yellow River and Yangzi River basins.  The system did have some allowances for inheritance—especially in instances like mulberry groves, which would be maintained by successive generations.  In general, however, most of the land was to be reclaimed by the government upon a person's death or at the point that they reached 60 years of age, and then it would be redistributed. This is still a relatively simplistic overview, and there were plenty of different adjustments and changes to the system over the years.  Key for us, though, is looking at the adoption of the Equal Field concept in the archipelago. Up to this point, land ownership in Yamato, such as it was, fell under various family groups.  They would own the land and whatever was produced on it, so it was truly private land.  “Yake” were set up by the families as central storehouses and administrative centers.  In this case, the royal family was, in many ways, just another landowner, and their “yake” are indicated in the Chronicles with the royal “mi” honorific—hence the “miyake”. As the reformers went about making changes in the period between 645-650, they adopted the concept of the Equal Field System.  Prominent figures such as Naka no Oe himself gave up their private fields, and the royal lands were turned into government lands.  They instituted the concept that all land in the archipelago nominally belonged to the State, and that others worked it at the Sovereign's pleasure. As we talked about in the past several episodes, this made the Sovereign and the State more prominent in people's lives, and it built bonds with the peasants in that they were granted land on which to work and make a livelihood.  They didn't necessarily have to work out a separate arrangement with some noble family, and the fields and taxes were “equal” for every person. Of course, surveying the land, taking a census, and distributing the land to the people didn't happen overnight, and it isn't even clear how well it occurred outside of the lands originally owned by the royal family, at least initially.  We are told that even though the project had kicked off years earlier, back in 646, it wasn't until the second month of 652 that we are told that the distribution of rice-land had been completed.  30 paces of land—Aston notes that it was 30 paces long by 12 paces wide—made up a single TAN of rice-land, and 10 TAN made up a CHOU.  Each TAN or land a person was granted was expected to provide back to the government a sheaf and a half of rice, with each CHOU providing 15 sheaves. This effort simplified taxation, in a way—everyone owed the same thing, based on their household and how much land they had been granted.  However, it also would have required an enormous bureaucratic engine.  Scribes would have been in high demand—anyone who could read and write.  Without modern computers, they would need to hand count everything in a given district, then send those numbers up to the governor, and then send them again to the capital.  Hence the giant government complex set up in Naniwa to oversee all of this and to ensure that the government worked as intended. In the fourth month of 652, the work continued.  We are told that the registers of population were prepared—presumably based on the information that had been previously acquired from around the provinces and sent to the court.  The earlier edicts from 646 that outlined this system—which we mentioned back in Episode 109—was finally put in force.  As we noted back in that episode, 50 houses made up a township, or RI—the character used is also pronounced “SATO”, today, and often refers to a village.  Each RI had an appointed elder, or head, using the term “CHOU”.  This term is still found today in modern parlance:  The head of a company, or “KAISHA” is the “SHACHOU”, while the head of a division, or BU, within said company would be the BUCHOU.  KAICHOU is the head of an association, or “KAI” and the “GAKUCHOU” is the head of a “DAIGAKU”, a university—basically the University President.  In this case the “CHOU” of the “RI” would be the “RICHOU”, using the Sino-Japanese On'yomi pronunciation, though in the vernacular they probably would have been called the “Sato-osa”.  All of this just means village head or village chief. So 50 houses made up a RI, with one RICHOU at the head.  In addition, each house would have a senior member appointed as the official head of household, or KACHOU.  From there, houses were associated together in groups of five for mutual protection, with one head, or CHOU, per group of five.  And okay, so they were creating groups of people for administrative purposes?  Who cares?  Well, the thing about this is that it was encoded into the new legal system, and it had several implications.  Chief among them was the implication of primogeniture: Since the most senior person was made the KACHOU or head of household (and by “person” I think we can assume that “man” was a given, unless there were no men in the house for some reason), this meant that the eldest person in the household was automatically the one who inherited that position, along with the status and control that came with it.  As we've seen, up to this point, it was not necessarily the case that the most senior person would inherit in ancient Yamato tradition.  Inheritance could pass from a younger brother to an older brother, or to a younger son of a younger son.  While there was some apparent concern over lineage and making sure that the individual was of the proper bloodline, at least for royal inheritance, there was not an automatic assumption of precedence for who would inherit. Of course, as we've seen, this set off all sorts of disputes and problems, especially among the elite where wealth and power was involved.  However, I think it is fair to assume that these problems weren't relegated purely to the upper levels of society.  Inheritance is always tricky, even in cases where it seems like it should be straightforward. I imagine that the institution of primogeniture as a legal concept would have had consequences beyond just inheritance.  It set up ideas of who was “important” in the family, and the family is often a microcosm of society at large.  Primogeniture meant that age and masculinity were both valued over youth and femininity.  That isn't to say that pre-Taika Ritsuryo was a bastion of equality, but we do see more instances where men and women seem to be on closer to equal footing. In the concept of primogeniture, I believe we can also see the institution of Confucian values—not surprising as this whole thing is cribbed from the continent, with a lot of it being taken from the Tang court.  We've discussed Confucian concepts of filial piety and how that fed into patriarchal—and frankly monarchical—ideas.  The Father and Son, the Ruler and Subject, the Husband and Wife, Elder Brother and Younger Brother, etc.  These were the relationships that were important and they defined much of the way people were expected to interact. As the new system being instituted copied the form of continental government, it would have also been preaching many of its values, as well.  Scholars will continue to debate how widespread the changes actually were.  Did the equal-fields system exist all the way out to the edge of Emishi territory?  Did it cover the mountainous regions of Honshu?  How about to the West of Yamato?  We don't know, but nonetheless, we do see both the expansion and centralization of Yamato power, so there seems to be something to it. By all accounts, the work that had taken place in this era appears to have been a smashing success.  The Taika reforms had taken hold, and the Ritsuryo state seemed to be off to a roaring start.  At the center of it was the newly built Nagara Toyosaki Palace, a giant stage for carrying out the business and ritual of the State.  One would think that the founders of this new State would have been overjoyed.  Naka no Oe, Nakatomi no Kamatari, and the sovereign, Karu, among them.  And yet, the story doesn't seem quite that simple. The first Ministers of the Right and Left had already passed away.  Abe no Oho-omi had passed of what appears to be natural causes, but Soga no Oho-omi, aka Ishikawa no Maro, was undone by slander, accused of treason, and took his own life rather than being killed by the government forces sent after him.  And in the 6th month of 653, the sovereign was told that the Priest Min had passed away. Min—Aston sometimes transcribes it as “Bin”—was one of the sources for much of the information about the continental systems of government.  We've mentioned him on and off for the last 5 or 6 episodes, though you may not have always caught the reference.  Also, since even Aston switches between pronunciations at times, I apologize if I haven't been consistent.  If I said Priest “Min” or “Bin”, we're talking about the same person.  He was a Buddhist priest who had traveled to the Sui dynasty in 608, spending 24 years there, witnessing the change from the Sui to the Tang, returning to Yamato in 632.  He was consulted on various omens, and he and Takamuko Kuromaro, who had also been made a State Scholar, or Hakase, at the same time, both worked to set up the eight ministries of the state, the core of the Ritsuryo bureaucracy. The death of Min was felt across the organs of state.  Both the Queen Dowager and Naka no Oe, the Crown Prince, sent messengers to offer condolences.  The sovereign commanded the painters, Koma no Tachibe no Komaro, Funado no Atahe, and others to make a large number of figures of the Buddha and Boddhisatvas.  They were to be placed in the temple of Kawaradera, though other sources say Yamadadera.  Both of these are in Asuka—although the capital had moved to Naniwa, and there was the temple of Shitennoji there, just south of the palace, I can't help but notice that many of the established temples remained in and around the old capital at Asuka. 653 saw something else, which also seems a bit odd, given the apparent success of the government.  We see that in this year the Crown Prince, Naka no Oe, petitioned his uncle, the Sovereign, to move the royal residence back to the Yamato capital, which is to say Asuka—in the heartland of Yamato as opposed to outside the Nara Basin, like Naniwa.  This is quite the request.  They had just finished establishing a large palace complex in Naniwa.  Why would they pull up stakes and move everything back to Asuka? So the sovereign, Karu, denied Naka no Oe's petition.  Regardless, Naka no Oe took his mother, the Queen Dowager, as well as Karu's own Queen, Hashibito and the younger royal princes, and he moved all of them back to Asuka, moving into the temporary palace of Kawabe.  The ministers and the various Daibu all followed him.  He basically moved the royal family and the court back to Asuka, without Karu's permission, and everyone followed him. We aren't told why this happened.  Was there a falling out between Naka no Oe and the Sovereign?  Was there some other issue that caused Naka no Oe to want to abandon the capital they had worked so hard to build? Karu was understandably upset by this apparent betrayal.  He expressed himself in a poem which he sent to his wife: KANAKITSUKE / AGAKAFU KOMA WA / HIKIDESEZU AGAKAFU KOMA WO / HITO MITSURAMUKA The pony which I keep/ I put shackles on / And led it not out Can anyone have seen / The pony which I keep? And if it wasn't enough that the people had left. We see once more, on the New Year's Day of 654, that the rats likewise left Naniwa and migrated towards Asuka.  This last one I certainly question as to whether or not it happened, but the meaning and symbolism is clear.  The Chroniclers are telling us that the effective capital was moving back to Asuka.  The time in Naniwa was limited. This doesn't appear to have negatively affected the fortunes of Naka no Oe and his supporters.  On the contrary: Nakatomi no Kamatari no Muraji, on this same New Year's Day, was granted the Shikwan, the purple cap, and his fief was increased.  The Toushi Kaden, the History of the Fujiwara House, says that it was increased by 8,000 households. It seems that the business of the government continued apace through 654, though it is a bit unclear just how things worked, given the split between Asuka and Naniwa.  Was Karu left alone in the giant complex he had built?  Or was it still where all of the government work happened?  If so, just how much were the high ministers missed, or were they working remotely, via messenger and post-horse? Whatever the situation, it would resolve by the end of the year.  On the 1st day of the 10th month, Naka no Oe learned that his uncle, the Sovereign, had taken ill.  Naka no Oe and the entire court returned to Naniwa to see him.  Nine days later, on the 10th day of the 10th month, Karu passed away in the state bedchamber he was around 57 or 58 years old.  He was temporarily interred in the southern courtyard, and Mozu no Hashi no Muraji no Doutoko oversaw the palace of temporary interment.  He would be buried in the Ohosaka Shinaga Tomb, which was built near the site of tombs associated with Kashikiyahime and others, south of the Yamato river, on the west side of the mountains that separate the Kawachi plain from the Nara basin. Two months later, Naka no Oe and his mother made it official, and formally moved to the temporary palace of Kawabe in Asuka.  Naka no Oe's mother, Takara Hime, would come to the throne on the third day of the first month of the new year, 655.  It would be her second time on the throne.   Since she reigned twice, the Chroniclers actually gave her two posthumous regnal names.  For the first reign they named her “Kougyoku Tennou”.  In the second reign they named her “Saimei Tennou”, to distinguish from her first reign on the throne.  As far as I know this has only happened twice—the second time being with Kouken, aka Shoutoku, Tennou in the late 8th century. Why she took the throne again is not addressed.  She had been the sovereign, stepping down during the Isshi Incident, when Soga no Iruka was killed in front of her.  At that time, Naka no Oe had been urged to take the throne, but he decided against it.  After all, Furubito no Oe was still around at that time, and seems to have had his own claim.  Naka no Oe couldn't take the throne while Furubito was still alive and, at the same time, claim to be the filial person that Confucian theory said he should be.  And so his uncle, Karu, took the throne, since nobody could really say anything against it.  Now, though, Furubito no Oe and Karu were both deceased.  Why didn't Naka no Oe, the Crown Prince, ascend the throne?  Again, we aren't given an answer.  There is one other thing that is possibly worth noting, however: Karu had a son.  This may be whom they are referring to as the “younger princes” who were brought to Asuka when everyone moved there.  This was Prince Arima.  He is believed to have been born in 640, so he would have been about 15 years old at the time of his father's death.  Naka no Oe was the Crown Prince, but did Arima also have a claim?  He was, after all, the male son of the most recent sovereign, Karu, and his queen, Hashibito hime.  This is something that we will definitely look at in a future episode. It should be noted that Naka no Oe was born in 626.  He would have been 18 or 19 years old during the time of the Isshi incident, and was only ten years old, 29 years old, when his mother took the throne for the second time, in 655.  She, on the other hand, was about 62 years old when she took the throne the second time.  The consensus is that even though she reigned as sovereign, the true power continued to rest with the young Naka no Oe and his clique, and they would continue to direct the government for the next several decades. And with that we largely bring to a close the Hakuchi era.  The era ended with Karu's death, and no new era was declared for Takara Hime's reign.  The period from the Hakuchi era to the start of the Nara period is often referred to as the Hakuho period.  An unofficial name taken from the names of the nengo on either side of it.  It often is used specifically to reference the art of the period, as more and more continental influence continued to pour in. Next episode, we'll take a look at the various interactions with the continent and go a little more into the politics of the time.  Takara Hime's second reign—for which she was posthumously given the name “Saimei Tennou”—dealt a lot with the continent, among other things.  Things on the Korean peninsula were heating up, and the Tang was continuing to push against those on their borders, both along the Silk Road to the West, but also against states like Goguryeo, in the northeast.  And yet it wasn't a time of constant warfare, either.  We'll do our best to look at what was happening. Until then thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

Last time we spoke about the Guangzhou, Gansu and Red Spear Uprisings. During China's Warlord Era, the CCP faced many challenges as they sought to implement land revolutions and armed uprisings. Following the Nanchang and Autumn Harvest uprisings, the CCP held an emergency meeting criticizing Chen Duxiu for his appeasement of the KMT right wing. With strong encouragement from Soviet advisors, the CCP planned a major uprising to seize control of Guangdong province. In November 1927, the CCP saw an opportunity as petty warlords in Guangdong and Guangxi engaged in conflict. Zhang Fakui's troops, vulnerable and demoralized, were targeted by the CCP. Mobilizing workers and peasants, the CCP initiated the Guangzhou Uprising. The uprising was ultimately suppressed by superior NRA troops, resulting in heavy CCP casualties and brutal reprisals. The failed uprisings, though unable to achieve immediate goals, ignited a persistent revolutionary spirit within the CCP, marking the beginning of a prolonged civil conflict that would shape China's future.   #121 The Sino-Soviet Conflict of 1929 Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, 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 the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia 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 where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. All the way back in 1919, the brand new Soviet government's assistance Commissar of foreign affairs, Lev Karakhan, issued a manifesto to the Beiyang government, promising the return of the Chinese Eastern Railway at zero financial cost. That statement was made in late July and alongside the railway, he also mentioned relinquishing a lot of rights the former Russian Empire had acquired from unequal treaties, such as the Boxer Protocol. This all became known as the Karakhan Manifesto, and it was formed in a time when the Soviets were fighting the Russian Civil War, advancing east into Siberia. In order to secure the war in Siberia the Soviets had to establish good relations with the Chinese. Yet six months after the july manifesto, Karakhan personally handed over a second version of said manifesto, one that did not influence the rather nice deal of handing over the Chinese eastern railway for free. The Soviets official statement was that they had accidentally promised the deal prior. The truth of the matter was some real politik work at play. The Soviets had been trying to secure a Sino-Soviet alliance against the Japanese, but it looked to them it would never come to be so they simply took the deal off the table.  Henceforth the issue cause a lot of friction. In March of 1920 the Fengtian forces disarmed White Russian Troops along the railway and seized control over its operations. In February of 1922 China and the USSR signed a agreement stipulating the Beiyang government would set up a special agency to manage the railway. Then in November the Chinese announced an area within 11 km along the railway would be designated a Eastern Province special district. In December the Soviet Union officially formed and by May the two nations agreed to settle a list of issues. The Soviets agreed to abolish all the unequal treaties formed by the Russian Empire handing over all the leased territories, consular jurisdiction, extraterritoriality, Boxer payments and such, but the Chinese Eastern Railway would be jointly managed by China and the USSR. Now since the railway sat in the area that Zhang Zuolin came to control, in September of 1924 the Soviets signed an agreement with the Fengtian clique. In this agreement, the Soviets lessened the 80 year lease over the railway to 60 years. The Soviets also promised to hand full control to Chinese administrators, but had a trick up their sleeve. The Soviets let the Chinese think they were adding workers and officials loyal to them, in reality the Soviets were creating more jobs on the railway while hiring Soviet workers. In the end the Soviets controlled roughly 67% of the key positions. When Zhang Zuolin went to war with Feng Yuxiang's Guominjun this changed things considerably. In December of 1925, Zhang Zuolin's army owed the Chinese eastern railway some 14 million rubles, prompting the Soviet administrator over the railway, Ivanov to prohibit Zhang Zuolin's army from using it. Fengtian commander Zhang Huanxiang simply arrested Ivanov disregarding his ban. The Soviets then sent an ultimatum to the Beiyang government demanding his release. So Zhang Zuolin ran to the Japanese to mediate. Things smoothed over until 1928 when the Huanggutun incident saw Zhang Zuolin assassinated. As we saw at the end of the northern expedition, his son Zhang Xueliang responded by raising the KMT flag on December 29th of 1928, joining Chiang Kai-Shek. The next day Zhang Xueliang was made commander in chief of the Northeast.  Now Chiang Kai-Shek's government had broken diplomatic relations with the USSR after the Shanghai massacre purge. Thus Zhang Xueliang felt the old treaties signed by his father with the Soviets were null and void and looked upon the Chinese Eastern Railway enviously. To give some context outside of China. At this point in time, the USSR was implementing rural collectivization, ie; the confiscation of land and foodstuffs. This led to wide scale conflict with peasants, famines broke out, I would say the most well known one being the Holodmor in Ukraine. Hundreds of millions of people starved to death. The USSR was also still not being recognized by many western powers. Thus from the perspective of Zhang Xueliang, it looked like the USSR were fraught with internal and external difficulties, they had pretty much no friends, so taking the railway would probably be a walk in the park.  Zhang Xueliang began diplomatically, but negotiations were going nowhere, so he got tougher. He ordered his officials to take back control over the Chinese Eastern Railway zone police, municipal administration, taxation, land, everything. He instructed Zhang Jinghui, the governor of Harbin's special administrative zone to dispatch military police to search the Soviet embassy in Harbin and arrest the consul general. Zhang Jinghui did so and closed the Soviet consulates in Harbin, Qiqihar and Hailar. All of this of course pissed off the Soviets who responded by protesting the new Nanjing government, demanding the release of their people, while increasing troops to the border of Manchuria. The Soviets announced they were willing to reduce their control over the railway as a concession. This entire situation became known as the May 27th incident and unleashed a tit for tat situation. On July 13th, the Soviets sent an ultimatum giving three days for a response "If a satisfactory answer is not obtained, the Soviet government will be forced to resort to other means to defend all the rights of the Soviet Union." On the 17th the Soviets recalled their officials, cut off the railway traffic between China and the USSR, ejected Chinese envoys from the USSR and cut off diplomatic relations with China. In the background Joseph Stalin was initially hesitating to perform any military actions, not wanting to antagonize the Japanese in Manchuria. However the Soviet consul in Tokyo, sent back word that Japan was completely willing to stay out of any conflict if the Soviets limited it to just northern Manchuria. Thus Stalin decided to act. On August 6th, Stalin formed the Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army under the command of General Vasily Blyukher. It was composed of three infantry divisions; the 1st Pacific Infantry Division, the 2nd Amur Infantry Division, and the 35th Trans-Baikal Infantry Division), one cavalry brigade (the 5th Kuban Cavalry Brigade), and the addition of the Buryat Mongolian Independent Cavalry Battalion. The total force was said to be as many as 30,000 with their headquarters located in Khabarovsk. Blyukher also had the support of the Far Eastern Fleet, roughly 14 shallow water heavy gunboats, a minesweeper detachment, an aviation detachment with 14 aircraft, and a marine battalion commanded by Yakov Ozolin. Blyukher had served during the civil war and was a military advisor in China attached to Chiang Kai-SHek's HQ. He had a large hand to play in the northern expedition, and was one of the select Soviets Chiang Kai-Shek intentionally made sure got home safe during the purge. Blyukher would exercises a unusual amount of autonomy with his far east command, based out of Khabarovsk. For the upcoming operation a 5th of the entire Red Army was mobilized to assist. On the other side Zhang Xueliang mobilized as many troops as he could, including many White Russians hiding out in Manchuria. His total strength on paper was 270,000, but only 100,000 would be actively facing the Soviets as the rest were needed to maintain public order and to defend southern Manchuria. The person in charge of the Eastern Line of the Chinese Eastern Railway was the brigade commander of the Jilin Army, Ding Chao, and the western line was the brigade commander of the Heilongjiang Army, Liang Zhongjia, and the chief of staff was Zhang Wenqing. Wang Shuchang led the First Army to guard the eastern line, and Hu Yukun led the Second Army to guard the western line. The Soviet army also had a quality advantage in equipment. In terms of artillery, the Soviet army had about 200 artillery pieces, including more than a dozen heavy artillery pieces, while the Chinese army had only 135 infantry artillery pieces and no heavy artillery. At the same time, the Soviet army also had a quality advantage in machine guns because it was equipped with 294 heavy machine guns and 268 highly mobile light machine guns. The Chinese army was equipped with only 99 heavy machine guns. In terms of air force, the Chinese army had 5 aircraft that were combat effective. On July 26th the Soviets bombarded Manzhouli from three directions along the western end of the Chinese Eastern Railway. Two days later a Soviet infantry regiment, 3 armored vehicles and 4 artillery pieces advanced to Shibali station, cutting the lines to Manzhouli. They then ordered the Chinese military and police to withdraw as they captured Manzhouli. Then on the 29th the began bombarding Dangbi. On August 8th, 100 Soviet troops carrying two artillery pieces and 3 machine guns engaged Chinese forces outside the south gate of Oupu County street, casualties were heavy for both sides. 5 Soviet aircraft circled over Suifenhe City firing 200 rounds and dropping bombs over the Dongshan Army defense post and Sandaodongzi. The next day 40 Soviet soldiers established two checkpoints at Guzhan blocking traffic and they even began kidnapping civilians. That same day 300 Soviet soldiers and two gunboats occupied the Hujiazhao factory. On the 12th, Sanjianfang, Zhongxing and Lijia's Oil Mill were occupied by over 2000 Soviet troops. Meanwhile 80 Soviets amphibiously assaulted Liuhetun using 8 small boats, killing its defenders before returning to the other side. The next day two Soviet gunboats, 300 marines and 2 aircraft attacked Suidong county in Heilongjiang province while another force attacked Oupu county with artillery. On the morning of the 14th both counties fell. In response the Nanjing government dispatched Liu Guang, the chief of the military department to inspect the Northeast front. On the 15th Zhang Xueliang issued mobilization orders against the USSR, seeing his standing front line forces bolstered to 100,000. On the 15th the foreign minister of the Nanjing government, Wang Zhengting reported to Chiang Kai-Shek negotiations were going nowhere, the Soviets were adamant about getting their rights returned over the Chinese Eastern Railways. The next day, Wang Zhenting told reporters that if the Soviets attacked anymore China would declare war. The next day Zhang Xueliang was interviewed by the Chicago Daily News and had this to say. "The Soviet Union disregarded international trust, trampled on the non-war pact, and rashly sent troops to invade our country. We respect the non-war pact and have repeatedly made concessions to show our responsibility for provoking the provocation. If the Russian side continues to advance, we will be willing to be the leader of the war, so we have prepared everything and will do our best to fight to the death."  On the 16th two Soviet infantry companies and one cavalry company attacked Zhalannur from Abagaitu along the border. The two sides fought for 2 hours until the Soviets stormed the Zhalannur station. After another 5 hours of combat the Soviets pulled back over the border. By this point enough was enough. China declared war on August 17th escalating what was an incident around the Chinese Eastern Railway zone into a full blown war.  Blyukher had developed a plan for an offensive consisting of two rapid operations. The first would be against the Chinese naval forces and the second against the ground forces via a large encirclement. After the war was declared on the 17th, the Soviet Army advanced into Manchuria from the western end of the Chinese Eastern Railway. The Red Banner Special Far Eastern Army initially dispatched a total of 6,091 infantrymen and 1,599 artillerymen in front of Manchuria, equipped with 88 artillery pieces of 76.2 mm or above, excluding artillery belonging to infantry regiments, 32 combat aircraft, 3 armored trains, and 9 T-18 light tanks . The army units included: the 35th and 36th Infantry Divisions of the 18th Infantry Army; the 5th Cavalry Brigade; the Buryat Mongolian Cavalry Battalion; an independent tank company equipped with T-18 tanks, the 6th Aviation Detachment, the 25th Aviation Detachment, the 26th Bomber Squadron, the 18th Army Artillery Battalion, the 18th Engineering Battalion, and a Railway Battalion.  The first battle broke out around Manzhouli. Liang Zhongjia, the brigade commander stationed in Manzhouli, reported this to his superiors of the engagement “of the battle situation, the 38th and 43rd regiments under my command fought with a regiment of Soviet infantry and cavalry for 4 hours in the afternoon and are still in a standoff. The Soviet army has more than one division of troops near Abagaitu”. At 10:30 p.m. on the 18th, the Soviets began to attack the positions of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 43rd Regiment of the Northeastern Army in Zhalannur. At 1 p.m. on August 19, the Soviets added about 600 to 700 troops opposite the positions of the 43rd Regiment of Zhalannur. At 5 a.m the Soviets dispatched five aircraft from Abagaitu to Shibali Station. On the 19th, the Soviets captured Suibin County with ease. At 6 a.m. on the 20th, the Soviets used armored trains to transport more than 200 troops to attack the 10th Cavalry Regiment of Liang Zhongjia's troops. After fighting for about an hour, the Soviets retreated. On the 23rd a battle broke out in Mishan and on the 25th 400 Soviet cavalry began building fortifications roughly a kilometer near the Chinese 43rd regiment at Zhalannur. Zhang Xueliang spoke again to the Chinese and foreign press on the 25th stating this. "Foreigners have many misunderstandings about the Eastern Province's actions this time, thinking that it is to take back the Eastern Route and violate the treaty. In fact, we have no intention of violating the 1924 Sino-Russian Agreement or the Agreement with Russia, because China has signed it and has no intention of violating it. China has no intention of taking back the route at all. What it wants is to remove the Russian personnel who are involved in the communist movement. Moreover, in this matter, the Eastern Route is a very small issue. The real point is that the Russians use China as a base for communism, and we have to take measures in self-defense." Between the 28th to the 30th an intense battle broke out at Wangqing.  On the 31st, Soviet gunboats bombarded three garrisons around  Heihe. On September 4th, the Soviet army bombarded the right wing of the 43rd and 38th Regiments stationed in Lannur. At 4 pm on the 9th, a single regiment of the Soviet army, under the cover of artillery, launched a fierce attack on the Chinese army at Manzhouli Station from the Shibali Station, but by 8:30 pm, they pulled back. At 4 pm, 8 Soviet aircraft bombed Suifenhe Station, causing over 50 Chinese casualties and injured a regimental commander. On the night of the 16th, more than 100 Soviet troops attacked the Kukdoboka checkpoint in Lubin County and burned down the checkpoint. On the 18th, the Soviet government announced to the ambassadors of various countries that they had always advocated for a peaceful solution to the issue of the Chinese Eastern Railway, while China's attitude was hypocritical and insincere. It was believed that future negotiations were hopeless, and all previous negotiations mediated by Germany were terminated. From now on, they stated quote “the Soviet Union would not bear any responsibility for any ominous incidents caused on the Sino-Russian border”. With negotiations completely broken down, Blyukher was given the greenlight to launch a fatal blow.  On October 2, more than a thousand Soviet infantryman, supported by aircraft and artillery stormed the positions of the 3rd Battalion of the 38th Regiment in Manzhouli. The two sides fought until the morning of the 3rd. On the 4th Zhang Xueiliang drafted the “national volunteer army organization regulations letter” trying to embolden the population stating "when the foreigners invade the border, the first thing to do is to resist. All citizens or groups who are willing to sacrifice their lives for the country on the battlefield will be volunteers or volunteer soldiers." The new regulations stipulated that volunteers of this new group would be named as the National Volunteer Army. On October the 10th, 30,000 Soviet forces on the Baikal side advanced through the northeastern border of China. At this time, the brigade responsible for defending Liang Zhongjia had been fighting with the Soviet troops for dozens of days. There was no backup and they were in urgent need of help. According to Chinese observations, the Soviets deployed nearly 80,000 troops by land, sea and air on the Sino-Soviet border. Along the eastern front, the Soviets capture in succession Sanjiangkou, Tongjiang and Fujin. Meanwhile at 5am on the 12th the Far Eastern Fleet commanded engaged in a firefight with the Songhua River Defense Fleet, near Sanjiangkou. According to Chinese reconnaissance, the Soviet warships participating in the battle included: the flagship "Sverdlov" a shallow-water heavy gunboat led by Sgassk, the shallow-water heavy gunboat "Sun Yat-sen", the shallow-water heavy gunboat "Red East", the shallow-water heavy gunboat "Lenin", the inland gunboat "Red Flag", and the inland gunboat "Proletariat", with a total of 4 152mm cannons, 26 120mm cannons, 6 85mm anti-aircraft guns, 8 37mm anti-aircraft guns, and more than ten aircraft for support. The Chinese forces were led by Yin Zuogan who commanded six shallow-water gunboats, including the "Lijie" (flagship), "Lisui", "Jiangping", "Jiang'an", and "Jiangtai", and the "Dongyi" armed barge as a towed artillery platform. Except for the "Jiangheng" of 550 tons and the "Liji" of 360 tons, the rest were all below 200 tons, and the entire fleet had 5 120mm guns. In the ensuing battle the Jiangping, Jiang'an, Jiangtai, Lijie, and Dongyi, were sunk, and the Lisui ship was seriously injured and forced to flee back to Fujin.The Chinese side claimed that they damaged two Soviet ships, sunk one, and shot down two fighter planes; but according to Soviet records, five Soviet soldiers were killed and 24 were injured.  At the same time as the naval battle around Sanjiangkou, two Soviet gunboats covered four armed ships, the Labor, Karl Marx, Mark Varyakin, and Pavel Zhuravlev, carrying a battalion of more than 400 people from the 2nd Infantry Division Volochaev Regiment, landing about 5 kilometers east of Tongjiang County and attacking the Chinese military station there. The Northeast Marine Battalion guarding the area and the Meng Zhaolin Battalion of the 9th Army Brigade jointly resisted and repelled the Soviet's initial attack. The Chinese suffered heavy losses, with more than 500 officers and soldiers killed and wounded, and more than 70 people including the Marine Battalion Captain Li Runqing captured.  On the 14th, the Chinese sank 6 tugboats, 2 merchant ships and 2 warships in the waterway 14 kilometers downstream of Fujin, forming a blockade line; and set up solid artillery positions and a 13-kilometer-long bunker line nearby, destroying all bridges on the road from Tongjiang to Fujin. A battle broke out at Tongjiang and according to the the report of Shen Honglie “the Northeast Navy suffered more than 500 casualties (including marines), 4 warships were sunk, 1 was seriously damaged, and the "Haijun" gunboat (45 tons) was captured by the Soviet army and renamed "Pobieda"; 17 officers including the battalion commander Meng Zhaolin and 350 soldiers of the army were killed; the Chinese side announced that 2 Soviet planes were shot down (some sources say 1), 3 Soviet warships were sunk, 4 were damaged, and more than 300 casualties”. On the 18th, the Soviets completely withdrew from the Tongjiang, allowing the two regiments of Lu Yongcai and Zhang Zuochen of the 9th Brigade to recapture it. On the 30th, Admiral Ozolin led some Soviet land forces in a major attack in the Fujian area. He organized the troops under his jurisdiction into two groups. He led the first group personally, who were supported by heavy gunboats Red East, Sun Yat-Sen and gunboats Red Flag, Proletarian, Buryat, minelayer Powerful and the armored boat Bars. Their mission was to annihilate the remnants of the river defense fleet anchored in Fujin. The second group was commanded by Onufryev, the commander of the Soviet 2nd infantry division. His group consisted of the shallow-water heavy gunboat Serdlov, gunboat Pauper and the transport fleets steam carrying the Volochaev Regiment and the 5th Amur regiment who landed at Fujin.  On the other side the Chinese had concentrated two infantry brigades, 3 cavalry regiments and a team of police with the support of the gunboats Jiangheng,  Lisui, Liji and the tugboat Lichuan. At 9 am on the 31st, the 7 Soviet ships suddenly destroyed the river blocking ropes and entered the Fujin River bank, bombarding the Chinese army, as cavalry landed. The Chinese ships "Lisui" and "Lichuan" sank successively, and only the "Jiangheng" managed to participate in the battle, but soon sank after firing only three shots. At 7 pm 21 Soviet ships sailed up the Songhua River, as part of the cavalry landed at Tuziyuan, advancing step by step towards Fujin. At 9 pm 7 Soviet ships approached the Fujin River bank, with roughly 700 infantry, cavalry and artillery soldiers of the 2nd Amur Infantry Division landed. The Chinese army collapsed without a fight, retreating to Huachuan, and by11am, Fujin county was occupied. Chinese sources reported “the Soviet army burned down the civil and military institutions separately and destroyed all the communication institutions. They distributed all the flour from the Jinchang Fire Mill to the poor, and plundered all the weapons, ammunition and military supplies." On the evening of November 1, the Soviet infantry, cavalry and artillery withdrew from the east gate. On the morning of the 2nd, the Soviet ships withdrew one after another. According to Soviet records, nearly 300 Chinese soldiers were killed in this battle, with thousands captured, while the Soviet army only lost 3 people and injured 11 people . The Chinese Songhua River fleet was completely destroyed, and 9 merchant ships were captured. In early November, the weather in the north became freezing cold, leading the rivers to freeze. Soviet warships retreated back to Khabarovsk, and their infantry and cavalry also returned by land. The war on the Eastern Front was basically over.  As for the western front, the main battlefields revolved around Manzhouli and Zhalannur. Since August 1929, conflicts here continued, a lot of back and forth stuff. The soviets would storm the areas and pull out. Yet in November, the war in the west escalated.  The commander of the Soviet Trans-Baikal Group, was Stepan Vostrezov, wielding the 21st, 35th and 36th infantry divisions, the 5th Cavalry Brigade, 331 heavy machine guns, 166 light machine guns, 32 combat aircraft, 3 armored trains, 58 light artillery, 30 heavy artillery, 9 T-18 ultra-light tanks, amongst other tanks. The Chinese side had about 16,000 people. There would be three major battles : the Battle of Zhallanur, the Battle of Manzhouli, and the Battle of Hailar. On November the 16th, the Soviets unleashed a large-scale offensive, tossing  nearly 40,000 troops, 400 artillery pieces, 40 tanks and 30 aircraft against the western front. At 11pm the Soviets crossed over the border. At 3am on the 17th the 5th Kuban Cavalry Brigade set out from Abagaitui, followed by the 35th Infantry Division who crossed the frozen surface of the Argun River, hooking around the rear of the Chinese garrison in Zhalannur along the east bank of the Argun River. At 7am Soviet aircraft began bombing the western front. The Chinese garrison headquarters, tram house, 38th Regiment building, and military police station were all bombed, and the radio station was also damaged. At noon, the Binzhou Railway was cut off 10-12 kilometers east of the city, and Zhalannur was attacked. Supported by 8 T-18 tanks and fighter planes, they attacked Zhalannur several times. On the morning of the 18th, the Soviet 5th Cavalry Brigade launched an attack against the 7,000-man 17th Brigade of the Chinese Army guarding Zhalannur. At 1pm on the 18th the Zhalannur Station and the Coal Mine was occupied by the Soviet army. The Chinese defenders, Brigadier Han Guangdi and Commander Zhang Linyu, were killed in action. More than half of the brigade officers and soldiers were killed and more than a thousand were captured. After capturing Zhalannur the Soviets concentrated their forces against Manzhouli. On the 19th, 7 T-18s supported the 108th Infantry Regiment of the Soviet 36th Division to attack Manzhouli from the east and west. Artillery pounded the city, before it was stormed. The 15th Brigade of the Chinese Army guarding the area was quickly surrounded by the Soviet army. Brigade Commander Liang Zhongjia and Chief of Staff Zhang Wenqing, alongside nearly 250 officers, fled to the Japanese consulate and surrendered to the Soviet army on the 20th. According to Soviet records, in the battles of Zhalannur and Manzhouli, over 1,500 Chinese soldiers were killed and more than 9,000 were captured, while the Soviet side lost 143 people, 665 were wounded and 4 were missing. Additionally 30 Chinese artillery pieces and 2 armored trains were captured by the Soviet army. The Soviets claimed that Chinese troops from Lake Khinkai were attacking Iman, modern day Dalnerechensk. In the name of self-defense, the Soviets began bombing Mishan on November 17 and mobilized  the Soviet Primorsky State Army and the 1st Pacific Rifle Infantry Division. The 1st Pacific Division and the 9th Independent Cavalry Brigade advanced towards Mishan, 40 kilometers from the border. Soviet records showed that during this battle the Chinese army suffered more than 1,500 casualties and 135 prisoners. The Soviets seized 6 machine guns, 6 mortars, 500 horses, 6 mortars, 200 horses and a large number of confidential documents. On November 23rd, 12 Soviet aircraft bombed Hailar, before capturing the city the next day.  By late November the Chinese had suffered something in the ballpark of 10,000 casualties along various fronts and an enormous amount of their equipment was taken by the Soviets. The Chinese officially reported 2000 deaths, 1000 wounded with more than 8000 captured. The Soviets reported 812 deaths, 665 wounded with under 100 missing. The Japanese had actually been quite the thorn for the Chinese during the war. They had intentionally barred Chinese forces from advancing north through their South Manchurian Railway zone, a large hindrance. Likewise the Kwantung army stationed in Liaoning were mobilizing, giving the impression they would exploit the situation at any moment.  In the face of quite a catastrophic and clear defeat, Nanjing's ministry of foreign affairs tossed a cease fire demand asking for foreign mediation. By December 3rd, Britain, France and the US asked both sides to stop the war so they could mediate a peace. The USSR rejected the participation of a third nation and suggested they could negotiate with China mono e mono. Zhang Xueliang accepted the proposal, dispatching Cai Yunsheng quickly to Shuangchengzi who signed an armistice with the Soviet representative Smanovsky. On the 16th real negotiations began and on the 22nd a draft agreement was signed. The draft stipulated both nations would re-cooperate over the Chinese Eastern Railway and that the Red Army would pull out of Manchuria as soon as both sides exchanged prisoners and officials. Thus the entire incident was resolved after humiliating China. While this all seemed completely needless, perhaps not significant, don't forget, the Japanese were watching it all happen in real time, taking notes, because they had their own ideas about Manchuria.  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. And so the Soviets and brand new Nationalist Republic of China went to war over, honestly a petty squabble involving railway rights and earnings. It was a drop in the bucket for such a war torn nation and only further embarrassed it on the world stage. Yet the Soviets might not be the foreign nation China should be looking out for. 

On October 8th Skidmore For Palestine held a vigil on campus memorializing the lives lost in Palestine and calling for the administration to disclose their ties to Israel and divest from Israeli firms. While there Benno Greene spoke with three vigil attendees, Rose, Liji, and Astrin. They discussed how the student body feels about Palestine, how the administration has handled the demonstrations, and why more isn't being done.

This episode we continue looking at the Taika reforms, covering only 3 months, but with edicts about mounded tombs, the labor due to the state vice individuals, and a variety of "offenses", often countering current practices such as forcing people to undergo "harai" in many instances. For more, check out the blog at https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-110 Rough Transcript: Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 110: Manual Labor, Mounded Tombs, and Marital Missteps. Maro sat by the small campfire he had made along the river's edge.  The water nearby was going to be the catalyst for the gruel that he was making with some of the last bit of food that he had.  As he stirred the pot, he looked over at his friend, lying out, his head propped up against the rock. Maro and Sumi had been working on one of the large tombs in Asuka at the commandof their lord, who had built it for his deceased father.  Now they were released and headed back to their village, still two days out.  Unlike their superiors, they didn't get horses to ride across the landscape, so it would be a few days before they returned home.  Unfortunately, Sumi had grown ill, and he was now almost delirious with fever.  Maro couldn't bear to leave his friend, but he also cursed his luck. What if Sumi were to die?  It was one thing to die at home, or even when they were working on the tomb.  But now they were travelers—strangers on the road.  If something happened to Sumi, Maro knew he couldn't just leave him, but neither could he go trudging through the countryside with a dead body.  Even association with death would bring problems for him, and if local villagers were to find out, they could force him to pay for the necessary ritual purification—or worse.  Heck, even something as simple as cooking rice on the side of the road could bring problems for a poor traveler—hence why Maro had found some place off the beaten path and away from prying eyes. Under his breath he prayed to whatever powers were listening to help Sumi recover.  If they could only make it back to their village, then everything would be alright. Once again, we are looking at the second year of Taika, 646.  As we heard in the past couple of episodes, the first year of Taika saw a plethora of edicts that would bring radical change to the way that the sovereign interacted with the land and the people.  These provided the start of  much more direct rule,   and yet also set the stage for a new bureaucratic state, with various new officials up and down the hierarchy. This episode we are continuing to look at what happened in the first several months of 646, largely because there was so much going on that it's worth focusing in on this short time period.   For one thing, we really should talk a little bit more about how this entire Taika era is reflecting the culmination of what appears to have been a major change to Yamato's cultural identity over the preceding century or so—a change in perspective that may not have even been entirely apparent to them, but which allowed Naka no Oe and the sovereign, Karu, aka Koutoku Tennou, to get away with these pronouncements that restructured the basic foundations of the Yamato state.  These changes include the death knell of the kofun period, with new restrictions on how mounded tombs were to be created, including how large they were allowed to be.  We'll also look at a litany of items being called out in the third month of the year—many of which directly affected people at the lowest ends of the economic spectrum and which give us a view of some of the practices that had presumably been going on prior to the edict. As we've already discussed, the early part of the year 646 saw quite a few quote-unquote “normal” things happening.  The sovereign moved into a new detached palace, perhaps while the Toyosaki Palace was being built.  This was the Koshiro Palace of Sayabe, in Naniwa.  Emissaries were sent out to restore—or possibly build—the arsenals; you may recall that the governors were supposed to gather up all of the weapons and armor in a single place so that it could be available, just in case.  Envoys from the Emishi came to do homage, and there was another round of envoys from Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla.  Apparently, this time, there were no complaints about the tribute.  That was all in the first two months.  By the third, the governors had been called to account for their misdeeds, but also pardoned – we talked about this two episodes ago, when we explored the new system of governors, but this is when their pardons happen – and the sovereign moved out of the Koshiro Palace, presumably to take up residence in the shiny new Toyosaki palace that was just getting blessed and which was the nominal reason for the general amnesty across the land. And with all of that over… well, it was time to get back to figuring out what part of the traditional order they would overthrow next.  And apparently, Karu, our sovereign, had an idea.  He sent a question to the Crown Prince, Naka no Oe, to see what he thought about it, and we are given the Prince's response in a letter back to the crown on the 20th day of the 3rd month of 646.    The question Karu had askedwas roughly: what should be done about a group of families called the Iribe, including the Koshiro no Iribe of the Omi, Muraji, the Tomo no Miyatsuko, and the Kuni no Miyatsuko; and the Mina no Iribe of the Royal Princes.  Karu had also evidently asked what should be done about the Miyake. Now the question reading as “what should be done about these people” sounds a bit ominous, so before we get to Naka no Oe's suggestions, let's explore just who were the “Iribe” mentioned here.  As far as I can find, there doesn't appear to be another use of that word in the Chronicles, but the other terms around it provide clues and we have a general consensus about what this is all about.  “Koshiro”—the Child's Generation—and the “Mina”—the exalted name—suggest that the Iribe were those families set up in the name of a given prince or person.  As we've talked about on the podcast in the past, from the start of the various “Be” families, there was a longstanding tradition of creating specific families to support given individuals: for former queens, princes, and more. These families often took the name of the palace where these individuals  resided.  The output of these families and worker groups would then go to support that individual and their relatives. The language used in Naka no Oe's letter, here, suggests that various other elites had set up similar groups for themselves or their own relatives This is supported by the fact that the Miyake are also mentioned.  The Miyake were the royal granaries, and while they had a political significance in extending the presence of the Yamato throne, they were also supplying income, in the form of rice, to the throne and various members of the royal family. So, Karu's question basically boiled down to: what do we do about all of these groups that exist purely to support elite families?  Naka no Oe's response reflects the new order that he was pushing for in this period.  He notes that there is only one sovereign, and only the sovereign was owed the labor of the populace—suggesting that the labor of the Iribe and those otherwise conscripted into labor should be done according to the new labor laws they had just enacted.  This also suggested that even the Miyake should be abolished. This was another Big Change in the Taika era, and once again, this would have large ramifications, as it suggested, once again, that the traditions of people providing labor to these elite families would go away—although not entirely.  As we will see, elites would still get an income, but it would no longer be based on your hereditary rank and position and provided by groups bound to your service alone, but instead based on your appointed rank and position in the new government.  Those serving in government would continue to receive a stipend based on the labor of agricultural workers on land allotted to such purpose by the state, and in fact we've already seen where stipends were increased for some officers.  This goes along with the idea, at least, of a more merit-based society.  Those who worked hard and proved themselves would find their way to the highest positions and thus the greatest income for themselves and their families.  In reality, these promotions were highly political affairs, and most likely to go to those who came from the families already in power.  How that was envisioned, though, changed in this period, and it really emphasizes the shift that must have occurred within the cultural imaginary of the time. I've mentioned before the concept of the cultural imaginary, and it is something that I think we really need to talk about during this period—during the Great Change.  It is clear that, even if the term “Taika” was applied after the fact, people recognized that there was a sea change going on.  That change is externally represented by the edicts and the change going on in the way the government was operating.  However, this couldn't have happened without at least the tacit approval of the rest of the elites.  If Naka no Oe had just been a lone voice preaching the benefits of a more centralized state, with the sovereign at the top of a bureaucratic system that had never before been seen in the archipelago, then he could easily have been dismissed.  The other members of the court could have effectively revolted, refusing to comply and possibly even forcing a change in government.  And of course, that may have been part of what was behind the attempted revolt around Prince Furubito no Ohoye, which we talked about last episode. However, enough people continued to side with Naka no Oe and Nakatomi no Kamatari and their ideas that any opposition was unable to overcome their momentum.  So why? I would suggest that this was the result and culmination of a new way of envisioning—of imagining, if you will—the Yamato state.  It is an image that would have been familiar to the Chroniclers, and we see it throughout their narrative: the image of an imperial state, with the sovereign—known to the Chroniclers as the Sumera no Mikoto, or Tennou—at the very top.  The Sumera no Mikoto, as the sovereign would eventually be known, held authority not only in the secular realm, but also in the spiritual—in the Buddhist and in matters of the kami.  It envisioned the sovereign as the natural ruler of all of the archipelago, and even beyond. This was an image that is very much in line with the thinking of continental scholars.  It conforms, to a point, with Confucian and Buddhist ideas of what a Good Ruler should be, and, by extension, what the role of the State was and how the people should operate within that realm. Prior to the 6th century, there had been another image of the sovereign—the image of the Oho-kimi.  There are similarities—after all, power is power and humans are going to human.  But there were clearly other prevailing ideas in play back then.  We've talked about the idea of co-rulers, who ruled in tandem.  And we've seen examples of female and male rulers at various levels of society.  Spiritual authority came from the ability to intercede with the kami, and there were no native Buddhist traditions prior to 538—despite attempts by the Chroniclers to paint prior generations with the brush of Buddhist and Confucian morality.  One's place in society wasn't dictated by their own personal accomplishments as much as it was the accomplishments of their extended family, though even some of that may have come about as late as the 5th or 6th centuries.  Perhaps more importantly, prior to the 6th century, the sovereign's direct control only extended so far.  They were the sovereign of Yamato, and though they may have had influence over others in the archipelago, they did not necessarily have direct control over their lands and people.  By all accounts, the people owed their service not to the sovereign in Yamato, but to their local elites, who in turn may have had duties to those above them. But along with books and immigrants from the continent, the people of the archipelago got new ideas of what the government should look like.  These may have been foreign ideas, but over time we had new generations growing up with new and different examples of how things should work.  These new ideas worked their way into their thinking about how elited should behave and act, and colored their image for what a proper State should look like.  Sure, they understood how their own traditions worked, and that is still the mode under which they operated, but they were ready to change. Some of this change started back in the era of Prince Umayado and the sovereign, Kashikiya Hime.  Umayado's purported 17 article constitution, as we noted, didn't exactly lay out specific laws and punishments.  It wasn't a true legal code, though it was accompanied by a few legal changes, including the first attempt at a rank system for individuals.  More importantly, though, it articulated a set of values on which the government should be founded.  Whether or not these values were actually articulated to Prince Umayado, aka Shotoku Taishi, or even whether they were written down before the Chronicles were put together is debatable, but that whole episode certainly suggests that these kinds of ideas, which were rife with continental thought, were making their way into society. And thus, Naka no Oe was able to suggest his and Karu's reforms based on arguments that no doubt resonated with the people of the time, as many of those in government would have been reading similar texts.  So even while it was seemingly against their immediate interests to give up control of labor or production, they had already been provided an exemplar of how this would work.  They had a new imagination of what their culture should be and look like. And that's why I bring up the idea of a new cultural imaginary taking hold.  A cultural imaginary is the collection of various shared values and concepts that a group envisions for themselves. If we think of modern countries, one can look at American culture, where there are shared values of freedom, individuality, etc.  These are backed by common, shared ideas and stories—stories of the Founding Fathers, separating themselves from Great Britain, but also ideas of the Old West and concepts of the rugged cowboy on his horse.  These stories and images help us to determine our shared values and understanding.  It also tends to define the “us” versus “them”.  Why are *we* the way we are and why are *they* different? To be clear, these stories are not always true, and can change over time.  Early visions of America included some people, but not everyone.  Stories turned George Washington into an almost mythical figure, with an emphasis on his heroic qualities and his honesty.  Our modern version of the Old West is often driven by what we saw in movies, which in turn were influenced by dime novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The historical Old West tended to be quite different—and much more complex and diverse—than our modern visions of it. We can see similar forces at work in the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki.  These were written with the cultural values of the 8th century, and deliberately or not, their values are reflected back into the past, which is then what later generations would hold onto, defining their own image of who they were and how things should be. When the cultural imaginary of what your society or culture *should* be conflicts with what people actually see happening, that often creates tension.  That tension can be resolved in a variety of ways, but it often requires something to change.  In this case, the cultural imaginaries of the elite had been flooded with examples of Confucian and Buddhist morals.  The stories and values had been passed along with knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, and more, in the media they were consuming from the continent.  There were also those who had come from the continent—from Baekje, Silla, and beyond—who no doubt also had absorbed some of these stories and values and were passing them on, as well. And so it wouldn't have taken that much for Naka no Oe to point out how the system that they were laboring under differed from what a so-called “good” government should look like.  So in a way, there was already buy-in for a change, at least at the top.  And thus it appears as though Naka no Oe and Karu were able to get many of the elites to give up a measure of their own autonomy under the old system for the benefits of the new system that was being created.  Mind you, it likely didn't hurt that the throne was also ensuring that they gave out lavish gifts of silk, gold ingots, and hefty stipends to many of the more influential members of society as well. There are still questions as to how much actually changed, initially.  Sure, we see the edicts and an intent to change, and the local elites of Yamato seem to have been going along with it, but we don't quite see how quickly these edicts were accepted in places like Izumo or Kibi, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that, at least initially, many people just paid the edicts lip service, waiting to see whether or not they would actually be enforced.  Still, these are definite changes away from the previous cultural norms. Which leads into the next big edict, which focused on regulating tombs. While the ancient burial mounds which could be called “kofun” continued to be built into the 8th century in one form or another, by most timelines, the Kofun period ended around 538 with the introduction of Buddhism and the start of what is known as the Asuka period.  As we've noted, even the kingly tombs of the royal family from the end of the 6th century stopped relying on the round-keyhole shaped tomb shape.  By the early 7th century the building of temples had become the new memorial for the ultra-wealthy of Yamato—a temple being a memorial that could be built before you passed and carry on your memory to later generations as a place of worship.  This was no doubt helped by the idea that you would also accrue a fair bit of karma, the spiritual capital of the Buddhist worldview. However, a mounded burial was still de rigeur for the elites and certain families, including those who had come over from the continent.  The last keyhole style tombs known to have been built appear to be out in modern Chiba prefecture, in the Kanto region, in the first half of the 7th century.  From then on, we largely see round, square, or octagonal tombs.  Some of the latest tombs that we know of, in the late 7th and early 8th centuries, show clear signs of continental influence.  Kitora kofun and Takamatsuzuka Kofun, both in the Asuka area, are decorated in ways similar to tombs in Goguryeo, including paintings of the four directional animals mentioned in the Liji, the Confucian Book of Rites: Suzaku, the red bird of the south; Byakko, the white tiger of the west; Genbu, the black tortoise of the north; and Seiryuu, the blue dragon of the east.  Takamatsuzuka also contains murals of courtiers dressed in clothing that would be quite at home on the continent and which looks quite different from the clothing seen on haniwa figures from only a century or so earlier. Tombs were also more likely to be clustered together, and often only contained a single burial, rather than evidence of a double burial.  This was likely influenced by the edict of 646.  That edict also gives us ideas on what was considered to be reasonable for that era, and provides some of our best descriptions in the written record to help us better understand tomb construction. I would also note that the court had moved to Naniwa, and near to Naniwa were some of the largest of the kofun, including Daisen-ryo, the largest kofun in Japan and one of the largest mausoleums in the entire world.  So perhaps that was also influencing their thoughts. The edict starts out noting that large, mounded tombs are wasteful.  This shouldn't be a surprise:  large tombs were always about conspicuous consumption as a sign of the wealth and power of the occupant and their family.  As noted earlier, however, a lot of that seems to have shifted to the building of temples, and as such, tombs were no longer seen as something to waste resources on.  However, since it was still tradition, it was still happening, hence the edict. And so it goes on to limit the size of the tombs.  At the largest, it says a tomb should be no more than about nine shaku wide and 5 shaku wide on the inside—one shaku being approximately 1 foot—and no more then 9 hiro to a side and 5 hiro in height.  A “Hiro” was an ancient measure that was generally the length of two outspread arms.  This was about 5 shaku, or 5 feet.    That means that we are still talking about a mound 45 feet on a side, which is nothing to sneeze at.  But this size was reserved for princes and up.  The Daijin—the great ministers of State—could have similar inner dimensions for their sarcophagus, but the outside was limited to only seven hiro to a side and three hiro in height.  Lesser ministers only got 5 hiro to a side and 2.5 hiro in height, while others were allocated no mound at all, and a smaller inner chamber. In addition, the number of laborers and how long they could work on a tomb was also capped.  The largest tombs were allotted 1,000 laborers for 7 days.  The Daijin received 500 laborers over 5 days.  Other ministers received 250 laborers for 3 days, while below that you received 100 laborers for 1 day or 50 laborers for no more than 1 day.  Here we see the state once again asserting itself into the relationship between the various individuals and the laborers—previously, an elite family would have just used as many laborers as they had private access to, but now things were being regulated and it was all based on your rank and position within the civil service of the new government. In addition, how the deceased was delivered to the monument also was regulated.  A carriage was permitted for the highest ranked individuals—the members of the royal family.  Ministers could be placed on a bier and carried by pall-bearers.  No mention is made of people of the lower class, with the assumption that they likely didn't get such a ceremony. White cloth hangings were allowed in many cases—white is practical, in that it isn't dyed and so it wouldn't be as expensive, but it was also considered the color of death in Buddhist and continental tradition, so not surprising.  They also allowed small stones to be used for princes down to the rank of “sho-chi”—that was the lowest official rank.  These stones could refer to several things, and we aren't quite sure.  According to Aston, the compilers of the “shukai” edition of the Nihon Shoki attributed this to memorial stones set up with inscriptions about the deceased, but as he points out, we haven't found anything that really correlates to that.  Aston instead suggests that what is meant are the stones used to build the roof of the main chamber.  If you look at tombs like Ishibutai kofun, you can see the large stones used there, but this may be referring to something similar, possibly using smaller stones that took less effort to haul into place.  There were also stones used on the outside to decorate the kofun back in the day, and I suppose that they could have meant that as well. More than just regulations, there were prohibitions placed on burials.  For one thing, the concept of a temporary interment was discontinued for everyone.  In the past, a body would be buried or even placed in a hut for some time and then the burial would take place at a later date.  There are several reasons this may have been done in the past, from the purely ritual to the more practical.  However, that was no longer considered to be appropriate.  Likewise, commoners were required to be buried within a day of their death.  This goes along with talk about reducing “pollution”, which may have referred to spiritual as much as physical pollution, and so plots of ground were set aside specifically for burials, and people were not allowed to be buried outside of those official locations.  That could certainly help explain why we see more clusters of burials in this later period.  Using the sides of hills and ridges may have also meant that the tombs didn't take up important agricultural lands. There were also prohibitions on sacrifices to the dead.  For one thing, nobody was permitted to sacrifice themselves through strangulation—which apparently had been a thing even though we are told that human sacrifice was prohibited back in the time of Mimaki Iribiko, and the reason that haniwa were invented.  You also weren't allowed to sacrifice someone's horse or bury valuables along with the dead.  These are all things that we see in the early mounded tomb culture, including burials in the Kara, or Gaya, region of the Korean peninsula, and we certainly find plenty of grave goods in the archipelago.  It makes me wonder if this is one of the reasons that painted tombs, like Kitora and Takamatsuzuka, were used, perhaps in place of more lavish grave goods going into the burial.  There was also a prohibition on an apparent custom where people would cut their hair and stab themselves in the thigh prior to pronouncing a eulogy.  Similar traditions are found elsewhere, often to emphasize that people were grieving the dead. And since you can't punish the dead, if there were any problems then it would be the dead person's relatives who would be punished, instead. Speaking of punishments, this starts to get into a part of the Taika reforms that really focuses on the various offenses that people were apparently committing and needed to be stopped.  It is unclear to me how often these offenses occurred, and in some cases I wonder if they were things that were actually happening or if they were carryovers from the continental tradition.  Still, I tend to come down on the idea that these were likely things that were actually happening, and didn't fit in with the social norms and values that Naka no Oe and his cohorts were attempting to put in place.  Some of these will likely resonate with us, today, but others are a bit more difficult to fully grasp. One of the things that is perhaps most difficult for us to grasp today is the concept of “harai”, which Aston translates as “purgation” and is most commonly translated, today, as “purification”.  “Harai” is an important concept in Shinto, and has been something that seems to have been there in some form from the earliest times. In Shinto there is a concept of “pollution” or “tsumi” that can occur, and it may or may not be something that a person has control over.  For example, blood and death are forms of pollution—which also means that, by extension, birth also includes pollution in the form of blood.  “Tsumi” can also be something that occurs because of things that a person does, where they break the social mores or norms.  A number of examples are contained in the stories provided during the Age of the Gods.  In particular, you can see in the tales of Izanagi and Izanami, where Izanagi, coming back from the land of the dead, dips himself into the ocean to wash away any impurities—any pollution.  We talked about that back in episode 14.  In episode 15, we talked about some of the not-so-great actions of Susano'o.  Some of these, like the backwards flaying of the colt and flinging it through the roof of his sister's building is somewhat obvious.  But then there were things like moving the stakes delineating the rice fields, or letting livestock in to trample the young growth.  Those were some other examples of tsumi that were part of the many things that got him kicked out of Takamagahara, the High Plain of Heaven. An important thing here is that tsumi is not necessarily about a person's intentions, motives, nor responsibility.  For all types of tsumi, some form of harai, or purification, is called for.  Today, there are various ceremonies that can be performed by Shinto priests to help remove the effects of tsumi, and that seems to have been the case back in the Kofun and Asuka periods as well, but there was a catch: it wasn't without costs.  And apparently those costs could be significant—significant enough that it was almost like a kind of punishment.  Aston suggests that harai could include various payments, perhaps seen as a kind of sacrifice, but that could be more than some people could afford.  If we look back on the story of Susano'o, he had to have his hair and nails cut as part of his penance—his harai.  There is also some thought that this may have just been a literal payment to the community, like a fine.  I would note that “harai” can mean either purification or payment, depending on the kanji used.  So just keep that in mind when we talk about “harai”. Now here are some of the things that, according to the new edicts, people were to stop doing. First, there were people who saw or heard something—presumably something important—and yet they wouldn't say anything.  That wasn't going to fly anymore.  So I guess this is the pro-snitching rule—if you see something, say something. Then there were enslaved people who apparently would leave poor masters to find someone wealthier to serve, hoping to improve their lot.  Again, this was right out.  We are reminded that Yamato was a slave-holding society, and they weren't going to allow that. On the other hand, the new rules also put a stop to husbands who would dismiss their wives and then, when the wives remarried, try to make a claim on the new husband's property.  Similarly, there were some men who demanded a family's daughter for his wife, but before they consummate the marriage, she marries someone else.  In some of those cases, the men would, again, make demands on the property of the new husband's family as well as the wife's family.  The new edict put that strictly out of bounds. Following on a theme of women and marriage: there was a tradition in some places that widows who, when they married after 10 or 20 years, or even unmarried women got married for the first time, they would be forced by the community to pay for some kind of “harai”.  This, along with the other practice mentioned, was forbidden.  No longer would they have to pay for getting married. Now in some cases, it looks like men who wanted to divorce their wives wouldn't just let them out of the arrangement. Rather, they would sell their wives into slavery—another thing that the new edicts said would no longer be tolerated. And then there was the case of a man who believed his wife was having an affair.  In that case he now had to obtain at least three credible witnesses before bringing it up to the authorities.  One presumes this was to protect women from men simply making a baseless claim with no proof.  Not that a determined man couldn't find—or even bribe—three witnesses to come forward and accuse his wife, but it at least upped the ante a little bit.  Whether this was to provide protection to women or whether it was just to reduce the amount of work on government officials who would have to investigate and come to a decision isn't exactly clear. I would note that while many of these new rules were coming down on the side of protecting women, to some degree, there is still a very heavy patriarchal bias demonstrated throughout. In addition to all the information on marital affairs,  there were a few other, unrelated issues, but all of them were connected to the need to do harai.  And now we come back to our story about poor Maro and Sumi from the beginning of the episode: let's say a man, finishing his forced labor, is returning back when he falls ill on the road and dies in some village.  According to established traditions, the people there could then require his companions or even family members to perform harai—presumably meaning that they would have to pay the village something or at least pay for the ritual cleansing, to compensate for the tsumi that the death caused.  Similarly, if someone were to drown, his companions would be held responsible.  Even if someone were to stop and cook rice by the roadside while traveling, they could be made to perform harai.  And the harai for all of this was so onerous that we are told that even a younger brother might completely ignore the body of his elder brother, just to avoid being associated with him and thus forced to perform harai. In all of these cases, the edict said that this would no longer be acceptable.  You couldn't just put the squeeze on someone to perform harai just because their companion happened to pass away. Being on the road and traveling—especially for official government service—was clearly something that was on their mind.  Moving on from the list of things that were to be discontinued without exception, there were a few other cases that were dealt with in the same edict. First, there was the case where peasants, heading to the capital, would leave their horses with someone in Owari or Mikawa, for example.  They would leave cloth and bundles of hemp as payment for the person to look after their horses, and even procure a spade as a gift when they returned.  However, when they got back, they would find that their horse had died, or else the horse had been sold, but the owner was told it had died.  The last trick, if it was a mare, was to get the mare pregnant and then claim that the pregnancy had polluted their house, therefore the owner would have to do harai, meaning that the horse usually ended up staying with the person who was supposed to be holding onto it. The solution was to use the new bureaucracy.  The owner and the person who agreed to keep the horse would make their statement to the village elder and the owner would hand over the renumeration to the elder as the third party.  This payment would be held by the elder until the owner returned, at which point it was handed over to the person who had kept the horse.  This way the person keeping the horse knew that he would be paid for his troubles, but only if the horse was still around when the owner returned. So they effectively invented the concept of escrow.  I suspect that such a system could be applied to many other such endeavors as well, where there was otherwise no guarantee of payment at the end of a task nor guarantee that the task would completed as agreed if they got the money up front. Besides that, the edict also had a short note about dues payable to Market Commissioners for main roads and to ferrymen—likely various fees.  Instead, these kinds of positions would be granted rice-land which could be cultivated and they could receive a stipend from that. Finally, during the key agricultural months, everybody was to be working on cultivating rice-land.  The edict specifically calls out that they should not eat dainty food nor drink sake, I suspect because dainty food wouldn't give you enough energy and drinking sake would impair your ability in the field.  Each quarter, the Kuni no Miyatsuko were to send messengers to remind the people of this edict—a kind of human public service announcement. So all of that was part of an edict on the 22nd day of the 3rd month of 646.  I am not sure that there is a clear theme to all of it, other than calling out old practices and describing how things would be done from here on out.  There is clearly a concern with harai and how it would affect people's willingness to do the right thing. The next set of pronouncements would come almost five months later, and a lot of that had to do with names, as well as further work on the creation of the government bureaucracy, but that is going to take a lot more time, and so I think that for now we'll end this here:  The link between the state and laborers has been changed, the tomb-building has been strictly regulated, and a series of rather specific pronouncements and prohibitions has been issued. And so, until next time, thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

Liji Samuel from NSA sits down to share her exciting career path through the years until she found a job working for as Chief of Standards and Certification at NSA's Cyber Collaboration Center. She starts by sharing that she had always wanted to work in the STEM field, explaining that growing up she was surrounded with older cousins who were choosing STEM careers and it became an interesting topic for her. She accounts working for a number of companies that helped her grow into the role she is in now. Cybersecurity became a big buzzword for her, causing her to step out of the agency into US cyber command to help take up a management position for the architecture and engineering division. From there, she continued her cybersecurity journey first as the exploration director before moving into where she is now. Liji shares that there were barriers along the way that she had to endure and hop over to get to the right path. She says "So there are challenges and barriers that come across constantly with our work. Um, one just has to pause and reflect on how we can work with it, around it, or influence like our stakeholders and jointly create a vision around it." We thank Liji for sharing her story with us.

Liji Samuel from NSA sits down to share her exciting career path through the years until she found a job working for as Chief of Standards and Certification at NSA's Cyber Collaboration Center. She starts by sharing that she had always wanted to work in the STEM field, explaining that growing up she was surrounded with older cousins who were choosing STEM careers and it became an interesting topic for her. She accounts working for a number of companies that helped her grow into the role she is in now. Cybersecurity became a big buzzword for her, causing her to step out of the agency into US cyber command to help take up a management position for the architecture and engineering division. From there, she continued her cybersecurity journey first as the exploration director before moving into where she is now. Liji shares that there were barriers along the way that she had to endure and hop over to get to the right path. She says "So there are challenges and barriers that come across constantly with our work. Um, one just has to pause and reflect on how we can work with it, around it, or influence like our stakeholders and jointly create a vision around it." We thank Liji for sharing her story with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Liji Samuel from NSA sits down to share her exciting career path through the years until she found a job working for as Chief of Standards and Certification at NSA's Cyber Collaboration Center. She starts by sharing that she had always wanted to work in the STEM field, explaining that growing up she was surrounded with older cousins who were choosing STEM careers and it became an interesting topic for her. She accounts working for a number of companies that helped her grow into the role she is in now. Cybersecurity became a big buzzword for her, causing her to step out of the agency into US cyber command to help take up a management position for the architecture and engineering division. From there, she continued her cybersecurity journey first as the exploration director before moving into where she is now. Liji shares that there were barriers along the way that she had to endure and hop over to get to the right path. She says "So there are challenges and barriers that come across constantly with our work. Um, one just has to pause and reflect on how we can work with it, around it, or influence like our stakeholders and jointly create a vision around it." We thank Liji for sharing her story with us.

Liji Samuel from NSA sits down to share her exciting career path through the years until she found a job working for as Chief of Standards and Certification at NSA's Cyber Collaboration Center. She starts by sharing that she had always wanted to work in the STEM field, explaining that growing up she was surrounded with older cousins who were choosing STEM careers and it became an interesting topic for her. She accounts working for a number of companies that helped her grow into the role she is in now. Cybersecurity became a big buzzword for her, causing her to step out of the agency into US cyber command to help take up a management position for the architecture and engineering division. From there, she continued her cybersecurity journey first as the exploration director before moving into where she is now. Liji shares that there were barriers along the way that she had to endure and hop over to get to the right path. She says "So there are challenges and barriers that come across constantly with our work. Um, one just has to pause and reflect on how we can work with it, around it, or influence like our stakeholders and jointly create a vision around it." We thank Liji for sharing her story with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Büyükada aşığı Liji Pulcu Çizmeciyan'ı 2021 yazında, 98 yaşında kaybettik. 25.9.2017'de yaptığımız söyleşiye kulak veriyoruz. 

Scott Stephenson, CEO of Deepgram, joins SlatorPod to talk about his unique journey to co-founding the deep tech, automatic speech recognition (ASR) company and raising over USD 50m in funding.Scott recalls how his experience working with dark matter detectors as a particle physicist in China led to him becoming a deep-learning entrepreneur. He discusses some challenges in solving ASR; from labeling data for machine learning to formulating and executing an effective go-to-market strategy.The CEO gives his thoughts on Whisper, OpenAI's open-source ASR model, and how it may actually grow the total addressable market for voice AI companies. He shares the difficulties when it comes to translating a transcript versus translating straight from audio into another language.Scott gives his advice on how to build a successful AI company and appeal to investors. The pod rounds off with Deepgram's roadmap for the next year, with text to speech, voice cloning, real-time translation, and sentiment analysis being potential step changes in their growth trajectory.First up, Florian and Esther catch up on the language industry news from the past month, with Google announcing the launch of Translation Hub, its enterprise-scale document translation service.Esther discusses some of the language highlights from Netflix's third-quarter earnings call, including the titles of some of the best-performing non-English content. Meanwhile, Zoo Digital's share price was at a near all-time high as they weighed in at an almost USD 170m market cap.The duo also talk about funding, where multilingual AI writer Jasper announced it had raised USD 125m in its unicorn-making series A, which valued the startup at USD 1.5bn. And, after a dip in the Slator Language Industry Job Index in September, the LIJI defied expectations of a slowdown as it reached an all-time high in November.

Episode 172 of the #MVPbuzzChat interview series. Conversation between Microsoft Regional Director and MVP Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), and AI MVP, Liji Thomas (@lijithomas2020), a Technical Manager at Valorem Reply, based in Overland Park, Kansas. You can also find this episode on the CollabTalk blog at https://www.buckleyplanet.com/2022/07/mvpbuzzchat-with-liji-thomas.html

Antihistamines can cause many short-term effects such as urinary retention, constipation, dry mouth, increased appetite, and more serious long-term effects. One study showed a 3.5-fold increase in the risk of gliomas, a common type of brain tumor in patients with long-term antihistamine use for allergic conditions. Decongestants produce vascular effects like an increase in blood pressure, headache, sleeplessness and irritability. Long-term side effects are unknown.Corticosteroids can cause thinning of skin and mucous membranes, discoloration of the skin, and irritation. Used topically they favor absorption into the systemic circulation which can cause disturbance of the normal hormonal levels in the body. Corticosteroid eye drops can cause glaucoma, cataract formation and infection. Inhalers can cause irritation of the mucous membranes of the mouth and throat, as well as yeast infections of the mouth.Oral corticosteroids cause still more severe side effects over the long term such as:stomach ulcerationcataract formation (opacity of the eye lenses)osteoporosis (reduced mineral content of bones resulting in weaker fracture-prone bones)muscle weaknesshyperglycemia (abnormally high blood sugar levels)Delayed growth when used in childrenIncreased blood pressureThomas, Liji. "Long Term Effects of Taking Allergy Medications". News-Medical. 12 May 2022. .Our goal is to give people freedom from allergies through the power of natural healing. It is possible! In this episode the docs share some insight on the supplements and home remedies that they have seen be effective for their patients suffering from allergies. Drug dependence and dealing with the "side effects" is no way to live. We think there's a BETTER WAY!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/gonstead-chiropractic-and-wellness/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

2nd Copernican Revolution and HCAI Successful use cases of chatbots Why Conversational AI? Guidelines for developing chatbots How to take care of local sensitivies which may be specific to certain areas and cultures? Should all software engineers should learn anthropology and psychology? What makes a successful chatbot? Advice for any new manager Connect with Liji Thomas LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liji-thomas/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lijithomas2020/ Connect with me: Twitter: https://twitter.com/jjude Website: https://jjude.com/ Newsletter: https://jjude.com/subscribe LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjude/ Email: podcast@jjude.com Executive Coaching Program: https://gravitaswins.com Thank you for listening. If you enjoy the podcast, would you please leave a short review on Apple podcast? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in finding this podcast. And it boosts my spirits.

Christophe Djaouani, President of newly launched Toppan Digital Language, joins SlatorPod to discuss the Japanese corporate giant's plans to become a leader in translation for regulated industries.Christophe shares his career journey; from his days as project manager at RR Donnelley to how he worked his way up to Executive Vice President at SDL. He introduces the members of the Toppan Digital Language executive team.In an exclusive, Christophe announces that Toppan Printing will be renamed Toppan Inc. to reflect the transformation of the company. He goes over the benefits of having existing pockets of translation and localization within the organization.He talks about the challenges of the regulated space and points out the value of security and quality when creating, managing, and delivering multilingual content at speed and at scale. He also gives tips on RFP procurement; having the right tools, team, and approach.Christophe ends with the company's vision to become the market leader in language solutions for regulated and business-critical content within five years.First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week — with Zoom's acquisition of German speech translation provider, Kites. Esther talks about another company that was popular throughout the pandemic, Netflix, which recently announced the arrival of Timed Text Authoring Lineage (TTAL). Florian delves into an interesting sub-sphere of translation, Japanese gaming, where he goes through a series of tweets from popular Japanese game translators.Esther closes with the Slator Language Industry Job Index (LIJI), which surged by 9.9 points in July, after a four-point dip in June interrupted the LIJI's consistent climb since January 2021.

Liji Thomas is South Asian and an inclusion and diversity executive for the Beauty Counter. She discusses what it means to truly be inclusive, how we help each other by creating space for others, and being courageous enough to take leaps of faith in our careers that can transform organizations and communities.  Liji offers advice on negotiating your worth in a professional context and explores her mantra - comfort and growth cannot coexist.  In the most zen and calming way, Liji talks about the courage to challenge the status quo, the importance of mutual trust and respect, as well as how leadership enables and inspires people to challenge themselves, overcome self-imposed barriers, discover new potential, and reach new heights.

ESTRENO MIERCOLES 14 de abril 2021 a las 22hs CINE AL AIRE LIBRE EN EL JARDIN DE CONGO HONDURAS 5329 - PALERMO https://www.passline.com/sitio-evento/la-calor-estreno-cine-en-el-jardin-de-congo Banda de Sonido disponible en Spotify y Youtube: https://youtu.be/baf0PTKlwHw. Mas información en IG: @lacalorpelicula / http://www.nanacine.com.ar Capacidad limitada. Ubicaciones por orden de llegada. Cumplimos con todos los protocolos para prevenir los contagios y esperamos que nuestro público también los respete para cuidarnos entre todxs. http://congoclubcultural.com.ar/ Sinopsis: Lola, una joven dramaturga y directora de teatro, entra en crisis antes del estreno de su nueva obra. Su actriz protagónica le plantea una y otra vez problemas con el texto. Una amiga artista plástica se instala en su casa tras descubrir una infidelidad y su ex novio le reclama derechos autorales. Lola duda sobre su propia obra, se debate entre avanzar en el caos o dejarlo todo. Necesita encontrar el verdadero sentido de lo que está haciendo para justificarse. La pelicula se estreno en Diciembre 2020. en la Competencia Internacional del 10º Festival Internacional de Cine en Balneario Camboriu ( Brasil) y el próximo 9 de Abril en la plataforma online Filmin para toda España. ELENCO Carolina Kopelioff Agustina Rudi Silvia Villazur Martin Liji Pablo Sigal Dafne Schilling Nicolas Moguilevsky EQUIPO TECNICO Director: Martin Liji Guion: Martin Liji & Rosario Cervio DF: Lucas Gaynor Edición: Rosario Cervio Sonido: Sergio Korin Arte: Mariu Fermani Productores: Martin Liji, Anibal Garisto Rosario Cervio, Andres Woslavsky Productora: Nana Cine Co Productora: Lumen Cine Con el apoyo de Mecenazgo

This week's episode of Ennodoppam Malayalam Podcast features three very special guests - Liji, Sajeevan and Gracy. All three are the recipients of the first "Thozhil sreshtapuraskaram" for their outstanding service in the unorganized private sector. Today's episode is about their life and experiences. You can listen to my previous episode Maayunna Bhaashakal Malayalam Podcast here You can connect me through my social media platforms Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ennodoppam.reneshia/ Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/Ennodoppam-Malayalam-Podcast-107206884480412/ Email me your comments and suggestions ennodoppam.reneshia@gmail.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ennodoppam/message

Florian and Esther are joined by Sandeep Nulkar, CEO and Founder of BITS Private Limited and co-Founder of Vernac Language Technologies to discuss India's language industry.Before Sandeep joins us, your regular SlatorPod hosts talk about the week's language industry stories...Florian shares news from Mozilla, which just took the decision to retire Elmo — the backbone of its localization infrastructure — and to axe hundreds of jobs. Esther talks about the recovery in the language industry job index (LIJI), which climbed above the baseline in October for the first time since March 2020. The two pick up on a few news items circulated in SlatorSweep: from TransPerfect's out-of-court settlement with former co-owner Liz Elting over the ownership of Wordfast LLC, to interpreting platform KUDO announcing an integration with Microsoft Teams. Don't miss our in-depth discussion with Sandeep; we delve into India's language industry, Sandeep's take-aways from the Slator's recent Indian LSP survey results, and his vision for the newly created Indian language industry association, CITLoB.

Dekoratīvās mākslas un dizaina muzejā top izstāde “Madernieka stils”. To atklās 4.novembrī. Bet Gulbenes novada vēstures un mākslas muzejs aicina baudīt 3. Starptautisko mākslas festivālu „Divi Jūliji” 2020. gada 25. un 26. septembrī Gulbenē. Par Jūlija Madernieka stilu dažādās mākslas sfērās un pedagoga dotumiem, un atstāto radošo mantojumu Kultūras Rondo studijā pārrunājam ar mākslas zinātniecēm Rūtu Rinku un Inesi Siricu. Par festivālu Gulbenē stāsta Gulbenes novada vēstures un mākslas muzeja direktore Valda Borza. Festivāls "Divi Jūliji" veltīts Latvijas lietišķās mākslas meistariem Jūlijam Maderniekam (1870-1955) un Jūlijam Straumem (1874-1970), kuru dzimtās mājas ir Gulbenes pusē. Madernieks un Straume ir izcili 20. gs. dizaineri un tekstilmākslinieki. Straumes daiļradi ir spēcīgi ietekmējusi Kaukāza tradīcija, turpretim Madernieka ietekmes paklāju dizainā sakņojas nacionālā romantisma art deco motīvos. Abu mākslinieku raksti ir vērā ņemams salīdzināšanas, izpētes un iedvesmas materiāls inovatīvas jaunrades procesā. Rūta Rinka  stāsta, ka topošai izstādei dots nosaukums "Madernieka stils", piebilstot pie šī nosaukuma ar paša Madernieka vārdiem "Vārdu stils ir viegli izrunāt, bet radīt - mūža darbs." "Tas arī visu izsaka, ka Madernieks bija ne tikai mākslinieks, kas domāja par dizaina latvisko seju, bet arī savu individuālo rokrakstu. To viņš visu mūžu ir kopis vienlaikus ar nacionālo stilistiku," atzīst Rūta Rinka. Vērtējot Madernieka stilu, Rūta Rinka norāda, ka "viņam piemita īpaša prasme iekļauties laikmenta ainā un tajā pašā laikā saglabāt arī kaut ko nacionālu un savu. Viņš ir jūgendstila laika mākslinieks, tā ir viņa jaunība. Tās ir pamatīgas dabas studijas un to stilizācijas. Tad nāk Latvija un studijasun pētniecības darbs Matīsa Siliņa vadītajā Latviešu biedrības muzeja fondos. Rezultātā ir šī īpatnējā simbioze". Viņa tuva bijusi arī asīriešu māksla un to var saistīt arī Madernieka līnijas precizitāti, kas iezīmē viņa rokrakstu. Inese Sirica vērtē, ka ornamenti ir tie, kas notur interesi par Madernieku un viņa stilu. "Viņš ir sarežģīts, nav viegli aprakstīt, ko viņš ir paveicis," atzīst Inese Sirica. "Es arī saprotu viņa vērtību, jo viņam pašam tas nav nācies viegli. VIņš ir radījis tekstila metu kompozīcijas, tur ir sakombinēts viss, tur var atrast ornamentus no cimdiem, krāsu salikumus, noskatītus Rīgas Latviešu biedrības muzejā no 18.-19. gadsimta cimdiem vai austajām villainēm. Bet viņš to ir paņēmis ne tajā vienkāršākajā veidā, viņš ir laipojis starp savu personiskā stila redzējumu un to, kas ir redzams etnogrāfiskajā mantojumā. Viņš to ir salicis kopā. Un salicis ļoti sarežģīti." "Visinteresantākais ir tas, ka viņš tos tekstilu metus ir radījis, bet praksē tos ir paveikuši citi. Tas ir latviešu sievietes, kuras saprata, kā to noaust vai izšūt. To es tiešām apbrīnoju," bilst Inese Sirica. Raksturojot Madernieka krāsu, pētnieces atzīst, ka tā ir ļoti latviska.

Think about this quote from Edwin Markham: “Choices are the hinges of destiny.” If at this time last year, today was once your destiny, what crucial choices did you make that have led you to here? What different choices would you have made, or different decisions would you have taken, that could have given an improved outcome? If where you are now is a direct reflection of the quality of your decision-making skills, where 1 is not quite and 10 is absolutely, how satisfied are you with your ability to make those crucial decisions that lead to your life moving in the best possible direction? Many factors influence the decision-making process, sometimes making it hard to determine the exact right thing to do. When deciding what action to take, do you focus on what others think or do you move forward with conviction through listening to your inner guide? No-one is perfect and if I knew then what I know now, there are some things I myself would have done differently if given a second chance. But life is not like that. There is a rarely a second chance to relive a moment and all we can do is reflect upon 'if only's'. At times, there is no allowance of time to ruminate and ponder. We may be forced to make a decision on something that impacts on an entire life - yours or someone else's - and trust that we have concluded the right thing. Moving into intentional thinking is to apply 'conscious thought' when deciding what to do. Download a FREE Self-coaching Tool on 'How to Make Better Decisions About Your Life' HERE. Liji Reid who is my guest in this edition of The Coaching Lounge Podcast sends a strong message to "be serious about your life". It's very rare that we get second chances, therefore, in this energy space of making an effective decision, Liji's message is one of encouragement to make yourself a priority and be the CEO of your life. When I interviewed Liji, I got a clear sense of his awareness that his success in life is fashioned through the dots - each dot being the 'conscious thinking' he has made that has led to effective decisions, not only in business but in friendship, education and other aspects of his life too. Tune in to get an insight into the type of thinking that an entrepeneur does, that paves the way for success. Connect with Liji here: https://www.nagegfx.com/

How did the authors of the one of the most important Confucian ritual texts in early China recognize, explain, and cope with mistakes and dysfunction in ritual? The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism (Oxford University Press, 2012) brings readers into the intricacies of the text of the Liji. Michael Ing respects the diversity of perspectives in the text while paying close attention to the ways that its authors shared a central concern with failures in ritual practice. Fluent ritual agents in the Liji were able to open and transform the script of a ritual to suit the changing contexts of a changing world. Rituals, however, could still fail, as a result of either preventable mistakes by these ritual agents or unavoidable failures inherent in the ritual script itself. The authors of the Liji attempted to help readers cope with a deep anxiety over this dissonance in ritual practice: though rituals were meant to construct an ordered world, they could fail to bring about such a world, and the reasons for that failure were not always clear. Ing proposes a tragic theory of early Confucian ritual practice in which the Liji authors embraced ambiguity in their depictions of whether ritual failures were or were not preventable. He suggests the creative and therapeutic opportunities that emerge from these anxieties, and ultimately situates this tragic theory of ritual in the Liji within the broader field of ritual studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did the authors of the one of the most important Confucian ritual texts in early China recognize, explain, and cope with mistakes and dysfunction in ritual? The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism (Oxford University Press, 2012) brings readers into the intricacies of the text of the Liji. Michael Ing respects the diversity of perspectives in the text while paying close attention to the ways that its authors shared a central concern with failures in ritual practice. Fluent ritual agents in the Liji were able to open and transform the script of a ritual to suit the changing contexts of a changing world. Rituals, however, could still fail, as a result of either preventable mistakes by these ritual agents or unavoidable failures inherent in the ritual script itself. The authors of the Liji attempted to help readers cope with a deep anxiety over this dissonance in ritual practice: though rituals were meant to construct an ordered world, they could fail to bring about such a world, and the reasons for that failure were not always clear. Ing proposes a tragic theory of early Confucian ritual practice in which the Liji authors embraced ambiguity in their depictions of whether ritual failures were or were not preventable. He suggests the creative and therapeutic opportunities that emerge from these anxieties, and ultimately situates this tragic theory of ritual in the Liji within the broader field of ritual studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did the authors of the one of the most important Confucian ritual texts in early China recognize, explain, and cope with mistakes and dysfunction in ritual? The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism (Oxford University Press, 2012) brings readers into the intricacies of the text of the Liji. Michael... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How did the authors of the one of the most important Confucian ritual texts in early China recognize, explain, and cope with mistakes and dysfunction in ritual? The Dysfunction of Ritual in Early Confucianism (Oxford University Press, 2012) brings readers into the intricacies of the text of the Liji. Michael Ing respects the diversity of perspectives in the text while paying close attention to the ways that its authors shared a central concern with failures in ritual practice. Fluent ritual agents in the Liji were able to open and transform the script of a ritual to suit the changing contexts of a changing world. Rituals, however, could still fail, as a result of either preventable mistakes by these ritual agents or unavoidable failures inherent in the ritual script itself. The authors of the Liji attempted to help readers cope with a deep anxiety over this dissonance in ritual practice: though rituals were meant to construct an ordered world, they could fail to bring about such a world, and the reasons for that failure were not always clear. Ing proposes a tragic theory of early Confucian ritual practice in which the Liji authors embraced ambiguity in their depictions of whether ritual failures were or were not preventable. He suggests the creative and therapeutic opportunities that emerge from these anxieties, and ultimately situates this tragic theory of ritual in the Liji within the broader field of ritual studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices