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The Dazai no Sochi--the head of the Yamato government in Kyushu--was a powerful position, with a lot of autonomy with lucrative opportunities.  The people in this position were often powerful members of the court capable of representing the sovereign.  They would often go on to become quite powerful in their own right.  So who were the movers and shakers that held this prestigious position during Uno no Sarara's reign?  This episode, we take a look at those who held the position and those who supported them. For more, check out our blogpost:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-151 PS:  Hang around to the end (or check the end of the transcript) for information on some possible updates coming to the show. Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is Episode 151: The Dazai no Sochi of the late 7th century   Tsukushi no Masaru was busy.  A new boss was coming in, and he wanted to make sure everything was prepared.  The Dazai may have been about as far as one could get from the capital and still be in Yamato, but it was also the first—and sometimes only—encounter some would have with the archipelago, so there was no excuse to be slacking off.  Of course, this was hardly his first new boss, though for as long as he'd been on the job, each one could well be his last.  He was getting a bit long in the tooth, after all.  Twenty-nine years was a long time to be working in the same position.  As Masaru paused, he thought back on some of the people he'd served.  There was Soga no Akae—he was ambitious.  Apparently he'd been in some rather compromising positions before coming out, but he'd done well enough when he went back.  Shame that he backed the wrong horse. That did bring a chuckle to old Masaru's throat, though.  He remembered when Prince Kurikuma had come out there, to the the Dazai, , and there were still people around who told stories of him.  When those Afumi court stooges had showed up to try and conscript the barrier guards, Prince Kurikuma and his sons just stared them down.  Everyone had been afraid that it would end in bloodshed, or at least that there would be consequences for defying the court, but Kurikuma was adamant, and the messenger had left with his tail firmly between his legs. Then there was Shima. By the time he came, Masaru already knew how everything was supposed to work. He may not have been in charge, but that wasn't his ambition.  It was enough for him to be good at what he did.  He didn't need to go all the way to the Palace and deal with the politics there—there were enough politics out here already.  Shima, though, he was clearly suited for that Palace life.  He was a capable administrator, but Masaru could tell he was ambitious.  When he left, everyone knew that he would be going on to bigger and better things. And now there was another Prince coming out. So they would get the government offices prepared and greet him with proper fanfare.  They'd bring him in and hold the ceremonies, and then they would get down to work.  A stream of officers would present him with what they were working on and what had to happen.  Masaru would be there to help make sure that everything was running smoothly and nothing got too out of hand.  And that was the way things worked out on the edge of the realm.   Welcome back to Sengoku Daimyo.  We are still covering the reign of Uno no Sarara, and, similar to last episode, we are going to continue to talk about the people who made up Yamato at this time.  This episode, more specifically, we are going to be turning away from the capital, in Asuka, and looking all the way over to Tsukushi—modern Kyushu—and at the people who served as Dazai no Sochi, or head of the local government out there, as well as the bureaucrats and staff that worked for them—at least as far we know.  Many of them went on to have considerable careers that took them well beyond Kyushu.  At the same time, we'll take a look at some of the things that happened under their rule as what Aston translates as the "Viceroy of Tsukushi". After that, I have a special announcement about the podcast at the end of the episode, so if you are interested in learning more about what we plan on doing, please listen all the way to the end to hear about some plans for the future. And with that out of the way, let's begin. So we are talking about the position of Dazai no Sochi or the Viceroy of Tsukushi.  Often these people are referred to only as being of the "Tsukushi no Dazai" or the "Tsukushi no Ohomochi".  The term "Sochi" appears later, and we first see this term applied to Prince Kawachi, in 689.  It seems to show up with two different characters, which might be a term from the later Taihou code that was retroactively applied or may refer to an evolution of the position over time.  I'm honestly not sure.  There is still plenty of confusion over what was meant in some of the references. We've discussed this position before on the podcast: This was the sovereign's representative to the world outside of the archipelago.  Not only did the Dazai no Sochi  oversee all of Tsukushi—all of Kyushu— and extensive defensive forces stationed there and in the outlying islands, but they oversaw all diplomatic and trade missions to and from the archipelago.  Envoy missions would come to Tsushima, where they would get a local pilot and send word ahead.  They would then be received at the government center, the Dazai, near modern Fukuoka and Hakata bay.  For most envoys, this was as close as they would ever get to Yamato proper.  They would offload their goods there and be put up at the government supplied quarters in Wogohori.  They would be wined and dined there, entertained as appropriate to their status, while word was sent on to the capital.  In rare cases, envoys would be sent on another journey through the inland sea to Naniwa, and then on to Asuka, but otherwise their journey would end at the Dazaifu.  Any return gifts would come back with the correspondence from the capital, and thus be handed out to the envoys and their escorts before the mission was sent back home to Silla, Tamna, or wherever they had come from. Being the middle man in this operation offered a lot of power and authority, but it also would have been quite lucrative.  While diplomatic missions brought gifts for the court, they also brought  trade goods, of which the Dazai no Sochi could have first  pick.  This is on top of the fact that this position often came with a stipend equaling the labor of hundreds of individuals.  Many of the Dazai no Sochi would serve limited terms, eventually returning to Asuka, where we see them take on powerful positions. Take, for example, our first Dazai no Sochi, Tajihi no Mabito no Shima. Tajihi no Shima was born, we are told, in or around 624 to Tajihi no Maro and a daughter of Ohotomo no Hirafu.  Tajihi no Maro, Shima's father was a powerful noble in the court of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tennou, and he had enough standing that he was one of the named individuals who provided eulogies for Ohoama on the occasion of his passing.   The Tajihi family were quite well placed: they were descendants of Hinokuma no Takata no Miko, aka Senka Tennou, Shima's great-grandfather.  This earned them the kabane of "Mabito", or "True Person" because of their royal lineage.   Tajihi no Shima was placed in charge of the Dazai from at least 682.  His predecessor that we know about is Prince Yagaki, who was dismissed around 676, and we don't know who filled the gap between him and Shima. Shima had quite the run.  We don't know exactly when he returned to the court in Asuka, but it cannot have been later than 689, when we see Awada no Mahito in the position.  A year later, in 690, Shima was made Udaijin, or minister of the right.  That's a huge deal and we will talk about that in a bit, but what did Shima actually oversee during his tenure as Dazai no Sochi? We have quite a few events attributed to him, this reign.  In 686, we see the Tsukushi no Dazai sending tribute in the form of human beings:  Common men and women of Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, along with 62 priests and nuns.  We aren't told where these men and women came from, but I suspect that they were refugees or captives from all the fighting on the peninsula.  That they were given as tribute suggests to me that they were enslaved—or at the very least they were not free.  If they were uneducated, they were likely put to work as labor, perhaps building out the new capital or opening new farmlands.  Later we see the various missions from Silla around the death of Ohoama, and the back and forth that went on, there, and in 688 the Tsukushi no Dazai entertained Kara, a Minister of Tamna, aka modern Jeju island, who had been sent by the king of that small country.  You may recall that Tamna, while late to the game, may have been one of the last holdouts of an early Japonic speaking people outside of the archipelago. Being the Tsukushi no Dazai, Shima would not have only been concerned with foreign envoys, but also with two other groups of Hayato—specifically the Ohosumi no Hayato and the Ata no Hayato.  Little is known about them, other than that Yamato considered them to be distinct ethnic and cultural groups living in the far south of Kyushu.  We've talked before about how southern Kyushu maintained a significantly different material culture through Kofun period until more recent times.  We also have indication that they had a distinctive shield and even art style—the famous "Hayato shields" appear to have been appropriated by the court, along with a contingent of Hayato men that were expected to act as an exotic guard for the sovereign and the court.  The earliest reliable evidence we have for them is a record from 682.  There are some questions as to whether or not they were related to the groups previously called Kumaso or even the Tsuchigumo, but there is no clear historical or archaeological  evidence linking them other than the common cultural finds in Kyushu more generally. The Ata and Ohosumi Hayato may have been distinct clans or lineage groups living in Ohosumi and the area of modern Satsuma.  We have a record in 687 of the Ata no Hayato attending Ohoama's funeral and presenting a eulogy.  The chiefs who came brought 337 others—a sizeable contingent—and they were all given presents by the court.  Later, we would see presents given out to 174 Hayato by Shima's successor in the Dazai, Awada no Mahito, and then in 692 we know that the court sent priests to preach Buddhism to Ata and Ohosumi.    In 695, Hayato of Ohosumi were entertained in the capital, and they even held a wrestling match for the Queen and her attendants in the area west of Asukadera, by the site of the famous Tsuki tree. So the Hayato would have been another group that Shima no doubt dealt with on a somewhat regular basis in his capacity as Dazi no Sochi—and then later on when he returned to Asuka and took up his new role as Udaijin.   And as I mentioned, that appointment was a Big Deal.  The position of Udaijin had been vacant since Nakatomi no Kane, one of the infamous leaders of the Afumi court, was non-consensually removed from the position—and this plane of existence—when he was executed in 672, at the closure of the Jinshin no Ran.  After that, Ohoama appears to have been gun-shy about sharing power with anyone outside the royal family.  The position had been left vacant for about 18 years.  So what made Uno no Sarara take up Shima as Minister of the Right?  And what about the Minister of the Left, or the Sadaijin? Well, we don't have a Sadaijin, but we do have a Dajodaijin in the form of Prince Takechi, Ohoama's first-born son.  The Dajodaijin was the Prime Minister in charge of the entire Dajokan, the Council of State, made up of the ministers of the left and right and the 8 bureaus of the government.  The Sadaijin and Udaijin served under the Dajodaijin, in that hierarchical order, with the Sadaijin generally being considered higher in precedence.  So it looks like, in this case, they had the Dajodaijin, Prince Takechi to run the Council and Shima, as Udaijin would have been responsible for ensuring the administration of the eight bureaus was properly carried out. That Shima was appointed just under Prince Takechi again shows the power and influence he likely had and the trust he must have had from Uno no Sarara.  Remember, the Crown Prince, Kusakabe, had died before he could take the throne.  Uno was enthroned as Queen, while the Crown Prince, Karu, was still a minor.  Whereas Ohoama had his wife and many sons to help him run things, Uno no Sarara was running thin.  As had been seen with Prince Ohotsu, there was always the threat that one of Ohoama's other sons could be propped up on the throne.  Uno had to look after Karu's birthright, but there was no guarantee that he would make it to adulthood in times before modern medicine.  It appears that Prince Takechi was actually considered the next in line, just in case something happened to Karu before he could ascend the throne, which makes sense that Prince Takechi was also trusted as Dajo Daijin.  Shima's place as Udaijin must have been indicative of similar trust that he would look after the royal family's interests.  This was no doubt helped by the role he played as Dazai no Sochi. As Udajin, Tajihi no Shima went on to have a rather incredible career.  He was given 4 cho of land for his residence.  This appears to be around 10 acres or so—a not inconsiderable amount of land, and it probably refers to the amount of land he was granted in the new Fujiwara capital city.  Later, in the Nara capital of Heijo-kyo, Prince Nagaya's residence was about that size and Fujiwara no Nakamaro's residence is thought to have been about twice that.  This would have given Shima space for multiple buildings, sprawling gardens, servants quarters, quarters for his wives and children, and much more. Tajihi no Shima would continue in his role as Udaijin, and would eventually, be promoted to the position of Sadaijin, a post he held only briefly, as he passed away almost a year later. He was not forgotten, however.  It is thought that he was the model for one of the suitors of Kaguya Hime in the famous story of Taketori Monogatari—the tale of the Bamboo Cutter.  Taketori Monogatari, also known as Kaguya Hime Monogatari, is considered the oldest known story in the Monogatari form.  It was probably written in the late 9th or early 10th century, with references to it appearing in works as early as 909 CE.  This suggests that Tajihi no Shima and others were still remembered, at least in part, over a century later. Shima is also thought to have been the patron of the famous poet, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, one of the famous 36 immortal poets.  We'll have to include Hitomaro in a later episode, though we might come back to him after this reign, as he isn't mentioned in the Chronicles, but we do have some fragmentary biographical information thanks to his inclusion in the Man'yoshu.  In fact, he's probably one of the most famous poets in the Man'yoshu who is not otherwise mentioned.  We are told that he was the court poet during the reign of Uno no Sarara, so it makes sense that Shima may have very well been his patron and helped him get his start. Now while Shima was back in Asuka, making it big in the court, the position of Tsukushi no Dazai had to be filled, and we are told that the mantle was taken up by Awada no Mahito no Ason.  This name is a bit tricky, as it seems to have two kabane:  Mahito and Ason.  Since his father is said to have been Kasuga no Awada no Omi no Kudara, the assumption seems to be that "Mahito" was his name, rather than his kabane.  Although it was likely pronounced "Mabito" at the time, I'm going to go with the modern pronunciation of "Mahito" in part to distinguish it from the kabane.  A quick side note:  When reading names from this period, we usually see the kabane coming right after the family name, as the kabane is basically a rank for the family and not the individual.  But we do occasionally see the kabane tacked on at the end of a name, as in Awada no Mahito's case.  I would also like to quickly draw your attention to his father's name:  Kudara.  That can also be read as Baekje.  Was this an indication that his father or an ancestor came from the continent, perhaps from Baekje?  Or just that he had close ties to that kingdom?  I couldn't find anything specific, but it seems interesting that he was put in place at the Dazai, where dealing with the continent would have been an important part of his duties. Awada no Mahito was not just a noble of the court, and even if his father was of Baekje descent, that may not have been the main thing that gained him the position.  It may have also had to do with an earlier incident.  We are told that in 653 Mahito was one of those who traveled with the 2nd envoy to the Tang court as a scholar monk.  He would later return to secular life, but that experience must have been a big feather in his cap, helping him land a good position at court.  In fact, in 685, we are told that he was Jikikwoushi rank—a fairly respectable position for anyone at the time—and he apparently tried to get his father raised to the same rank as he was.  Aston translates the record as saying he was willing to give his rank to his father, but it is unclear to me if this means he was offering to give up his rank altogether.  At the very least it seems that he felt awkward outranking his father—a good, filial attitude, it would seem.  However, Ohoama didn't care.  In the past, rank may have been given to entire families, but now the court was giving rank to individuals, and the rank Mahito had earned was his, not his father's.  And so his request was denied. Four years later, Ohoama was gone and Awada no Mahito was sent to the Tsukushi no Dazai.  We are told that he was in that position as of 689.  If that was the position of Dazai no Sochi, however, he didn't hold it for long, as Prince Kawachi was raised up to that position that same year, and here we have a bit of a conundrum.  Mahito is only mentioned as "Tsukushi no Dazai" while Prince Kawachi is specifically mentioned, at least twice, as Tsukushi no Dazai no Sochi.  There are some who suggest that Mahito may have been the Dazai Daini, an assistant to the Dazai no Sochi—effectively the second-in-command it would appear.  This makes some sense, when you consider it, and he may even have been acting Dazai no Sochi until Prince Kawachi was appointed. Of course, because our records are quite lackluster, and we are never actually told when Tajihi no Shima left the position, it is possible that Awada no Mahito was actually the Dazai Sochi for many years leading up to 689, and that Shima had returned to Asuka some time ago.  This is the problem with the way things are written—sometimes they mention a name and sometimes just a position, and rarely do they mention when someone stepped down. Still, Mahito oversaw a few things that we can be somewhat sure about as they happened after he is first mentioned in the position, though it was all in the same year.  For one thing, he is the one who presented gifts to the 174 Hayato in the first month of 689.  This included cloth, ox hides, and deerskins.  He was also there when the Queen sent relief to the Barrier Wardens whose terms were up.  These were the Sakimori, a position set up to defend the archipelago and repel any potential invasions.  I would assume they were regularly rotated out, especially if they were expected to man the fortifications out on some of the islands.  It is interesting that we don't often see them referenced, so it isn't clear to me why the reference was made here—it may have just been a note in one of the sources the Chroniclers were using. Later that same year, we also see garments being given out—likely meaning official court clothing—to the Tsukushi Dazai and others.  This was probably to bring them all in line with the latest formal wear being used in the court in Asuka.  We also know that in the 6th month of that year they entertained the Silla envoys, who were given various presents. And then, two months later, Mahito is out and Prince Kawachi comes in.  At the same time that Prince Kawachi is being made the Dazai no Sochi, our previous Dazai no Sochi, Tajihi no Shima, had his rank and fief increased.   I doubt this was a coincidence, and it is one of the things that, for me, lends credence to the idea that Shima had just then returned to Asuka and Prince Kawachi was his replacement, suggesting that Mahito had really just been in an acting capacity while the change over was taking place. Unfortunately, if we were looking for more information about Prince Kawachi's background, we would be disappointed.  Although he is a prince, probably descended from Nunakura, aka Bidatsu Tennou, we don't have a lot about him.  He—or someone with the same name, since we do see these Princely titles get reused, it seems—is found in the reign of Ohoama traveling with Ohotomo no Yasumaro and Fujiwara no Ohoshima to go entertain Gim Jisyang of Silla.  Later we see a Prince Kawachi delivering eulogies during Ohoama's funeral.  That suggests he held an important position, and that he was somewhat familiar with the continent, but we don't get a whole lot more.  Our next evidence is when he was appointed to the post of Dazai no Sochi in 689, a position he would hold until his death in 694—which may also explain why we just don't see too much of him in the record.  A promising career may have been cut short, as happened all too often back in that day and age. Still, as Dazai no Sochi, he had plenty to keep him busy.  Not a month after he arrived, Isonokami no Maro and Ishikawa no Mishina arrived at the head of a delegation.  They were there to deliver patents of rank to members of the Tsukushi government and to inspect the fortifications at the edge of the archipelago.  These were the same fortifications being manned by the newly arrived Sakimori. Speaking of the members of the Tsukushi government, it took a lot of people to make the Dazaifu work, not just the Sochi giving people orders about what they should do.  There were numerous assistants helping to keep everything running.  Some of them would have just been dealing with the Sochi's own residence, while others were clerks, guards, and more.  It really was a miniature version of the court in Asuka, and would have required a lot of people to tend to it.  And we know of at least one of them:  Tsukushi no Fubito no Masaru, whose imagined thoughts we heard at the top of the episode.  In 691, Masaru was recognized for 29 years of service as a secretary to the Tsuksuhi no Dazai.  Twenty-nine years in place suggests to me that he would have likely been one of the longest serving members of the Tsukushi government center.  He would have known where all the bodies were buried—perhaps quite literally.  While the Dazai no Sochi was often a temporary appointment, sometimes just for a few years, they would have likely leaned on Masaru for his expertise.  This is just like how modern government appointees like ambassadors may come and go, including for political reasons, but they rely on permanent staff, including a lot of locals, to provide the institutional knowledge they need to do their jobs.  One can assume that if Masaru had been successful for 29 years he knew how things were supposed to work.  And so I hope that his superiors made sure to remember that when Secretary's day rolled around. Prince Kawachi didn't make it 29 years, but he made it five.  He might have gone even longer, but he died in office in 694 and was posthumously raised in rank for his service.  History is full of stories, but in real life, the stories don't always follow the expected narratives.  As much as we'd like to think otherwise, good, moral people do not always triumph and sometimes those who do awful things are never punished.  And some times stories come to abrupt ends.  Of course, looking back, it just is what it is.  Prince Kawachi's life becomes little more than a footnote.  And yet, what if he had gone on?  Would he have followed Tajihi no Shima to help become one of the grand ministers of the court?  Unfortunately, we will never know.  He could have been a rising star, but we just know about his passing. Five months after Prince Kawachi's untimely death, he was followed in the post by Prince Mino.  Prince Mino would continue in the position, it seems, through the end of the reign in 697—or at least nobody else was appointed until 700, when Isonokami no Maro—apparently the same one who had previously come out to inspect the fortifications during Prince Kawachi's tenure—was appointed.  Although he came into the position in the next reign, we'll still touch on him, as he was another notable figure at this time. Looking back at Prince Mino, however, we seem to run into a problem—there are too many Princes Mino in the record.  If you just use the English translations, you'll find several references to Prince Mino, but if you look at the original text, you'll see that there are at least three different spellings.  For one it means "Beautiful Field" and another is just "Three Fields".  A third "Mino" is spelled with characters that don't necessarily create obvious meaning, and may just be a phonetic spelling. It is possible that all of these Princes Mino are the same.  Spelling wasn't standard, and different characters could be used for the same name.  On the other hand, we have one set of characters being used to describe a Prince Mino who supported Ohoama during the Jinshin no Ran, while another, the "Three Fields" Prince Mino, describes one of the sons of Prince Kurikuma, who was with his father in Tsukushi when the Afumi court came calling.  Since travel wasn't necessarily an overnight endeavor—unless you were Ohoama, rushing through the mountains to the east—it would seem that the Prince Mino in Tsukushi is unlikely to be the same one as the Prince Mino who joined Ohoama's forces back in the Home Provinces. So let's make the assumption that Prince Mino—Prince "Three Fields" Mino—is one person and the others are separate.  What do we know about him? Well, he appears to have had experience with Tsukushi and the government out  there, since he would be the son of Prince Kurikuma, a former Tsukushi Dazai no Sochi.  We talked about Prince Kurikuma before, back in numerous episodes, but particularly in episodes 128 and Episode 144, as well as references in betweend. Prince Kurikuma was not only a significant factor in the outcome of the Jinshin no Ran, denying the Afumi court the resources of all of the defenders at the Tsukushi fortifications, he shows up in local legends in Tsukushi still today.  So he definitely seems to have had an impact on the region.  It also suggests that Prince Mino had connections in the area through his father. After his father's posting as Dazai no Sochi ended, Prince Mino appears to have returned with him to Asuka.  He is described as a key member in Ohoama's court.  He was one of the Princes mentioned in the audience at the Daigokuden in 681, when Ohoama instituted the commission to bring together the various court sources that we presume would eventually lead to the creation of the Chronicles—the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki.  Later, he become a daibu, a high official, of the Household Bureau, responsible for the household of the sovereign, the sumera no mikoto.  This meant the upkeep of the palace, the kitchens, and the various servants waiting on the sovereign and his family.  This also means that he was likely close to the movers and shakers of the court. One of the projects under his purview appears to have been the laying out of a new palace and a new capital city.  In 682 he headed up the investigations at the place called Nihiki, determining that it would be a good location for what would eventually become Fujiwara-kyo—a project still underway in Queen Uno's reign.  He was also sent out to Shinano two years later to look for a site for a second capital.  It ended up not happening, but he spent a couple months and eventually came back with a map of the region.  It may be that the Fujiwara-kyo project took up a lot of Mino's time and effort, because we then don't hear from him for another decade, during which Ohama passed away and so much more happened.  Assuming he was still involved with the Fujiwara capital project, however, we see that in 691 there was a ceremony held for the tranquility of the new capital—a Chin-sai or, what we would today call a "Ji-chin-sai".  This is a "land pacification ceremony" done when breaking ground on a new building or other project.  So it looks like planning and land clearing had taken some 10 years, but it was finally ready to get started.  Later that same year we hear of them laying out the residences of high ranking nobles, like the Udaijin, Tajihi no Shima, and we also see the Queen inspecting the roads.  Then, a year later in 692, they were holding the land pacification ceremony for the new palace.  The queen would move into the new palace in the very last months of 694. But by that time, Prince Mino was on to his next assignment.  He had been appointed Tsukushi Dazai no Sochi earlier that year following the death of Prince Kawachi.  Not much more is said of Tsukushi for the next three years of the reign, but we do see the Hayato visiting Asuka, presumably with Prince Mino's assistance. We don't have a clear idea of when Prince Mino retired—it's certainly not in the Nihon Shoki—but we know that he did because he was succeeded in the role by none other than Isonokami no Maro, who would take up the position in 700.  Prince Mino, on the other hand, returned to the court, where he would eventually pass away in the year 708. And that was the last Dazai no Sochi who held the position during this reign, but I do want to talk about the one who came after Prince Mino just a bit—though more because this was an up-and-coming court noble whom we should be watching. Isonokami no Maro was born, by all accounts, in the year 640.  Despite his name he was actually born to a family that we know somewhat well from much earlier on: The Mononobe.  In fact, his father is apparently Mononobe no Muraji no Umaro, and he appears to be descended from the main line of the Mononobe family, which had declined ever since Mononobe no Moriya had been defeated and killed by Soga no Umako and others. And it seems that the Mononobe curse of being on the losing side in a contest for power hit Maro during the Jinshin no Ran, because we see him, at that time referenced as Mononobe no Muraji no Maro, along with two servants, or Toneri, serving Prince Ohotomo—aka Koubun Tennou—up to the very end.  In fact, when Ohotomo fled and the Afumi court deserted him, only Mononobe no Maro and the servants stayed with him when he eventually strangled himself. And one would think that would be it.   You were with the rival for the throne in the most contentious fight in recent memory.  You couldn't protect him and you were on the wrong side.  Sure, Ohoama was going to pardon you because he couldn't just rid himself of half of the court and hope things would still run smoothly—that would be a surefire recipe for disaster, and nobody wanted the government crippled like that.  However, you can't imagine that those on the losing side would be given any position of trust or authority. And yet, in 676, we see that Mononobe no Maro was sent to Silla.  And he wasn't just helping out: he was sent as the chief envoy of Ohoama's court.  That is quite the turnaround in four years, and we don't really know why, but it has been speculated that Ohoama was actually impressed.  While other members of the Afumi court fled and abandoned Ohotomo to his enemies, Maro and the two toneri with him did not, staying with Ohotomo until the bitter end, and likely conveying what had happened to the other side once it was all over.   That kind of loyalty was impressive, especially back then. It is also thought that Maro may have benefited from the fact that Enoi no Okimi, who was also descended from the Mononobe family, fought on the side of Ohoama.  This is a common scenario we see throughout Japanese history, where different members of the same family fight on different sides of a conflict, often meaning that no matter who wins the family can still claim to have been on the winning side.  When Okimi passed away in 676 he was posthumously recognized as the ujigami, or clan head, of the Mononobe, leading some to suspect that a bit of his shine may have rubbed off on Maro as well. In 684, when the various kabane were being rectified by Ohoama's court, the Mononobe no Muraji were included as Ason, or Asaomi.  There is some thought that around this time is when Maro changed his name to Isonokami, which is a name that was previously used by members of the Mononobe, including one of the brothers to Mononobe no Moriya.  We see him mentioned as Isonokami no Maro in 686, as one of those giving a eulogy for Ohoama: specifically he gives the eulogy on behalf of the Houkan, or Nori no Tsukasa, the Judicial officers.  He is mentioned right after Fuse no Miushi, whom we talked about last episode, who would go on to become a Dainagon and, later, Udaijin, or Minister of the Right. The first connection between Isonokami no Maro and Tsukushi was in 689, and we noted it earlier—he came out to inspect the fortifications as well as to hand out patents of rank to the court officials working out there on the edge of the realm.    He would return to Asuka in time to be a part of Uno no Sarara's official enthronement ceremonies.  There he is named Mononobe no Maro, and is in charge of the shields.  Given what we know of the role of the Mononobe as the early soldiers of the court, it makes sense that he would play this role, and that they would use the name Mononobe rather than Isonokami.  In the same way, the ritual was conducted by Fujiwara no Ohoshima, but he is recorded as Nakatomi no Ohoshima, probably because these were roles specifically for the Mononobe and Nakatomi, rather than for the Isonokami and the Fujiwara. This is another thing that can be quite frustrating when researching Japanese history—names can change at the drop of a hat, and people often had various ancestral names and titles that could be pulled out for various political or ceremonial reasons.  If you don't have the history or understand the nuance it can be easy to just think that it is a different person altogether.  And when you don't have much information, sometimes you have to ask yourself which is it? Maro would stay close to Queen Uno, even accompanying her to Ise shrine, and then, in the following reign, he would succeed Prince Mino as Dazai no Sochi in the year 700.  It isn't clear, however, if he left for the Dazaifu immediately, since in 701 he is noted as having been promoted from the office of Chunagon to Dainagon, and in that same year he went with Royal Prince Osakabe to pay respects at the house of the late Udaijin, Tajihi no Shima, who had just passed away.  He then left for Tsukushi in 702—or possibly headed back.  But in 703, he was once again back in Asuka, paying condolences on the death of the next Udaijin, Abe no Miushi—aka Fuse no Miushi, the same one whom Maro had pronounced a Eulogy with during the funeral ceremonies for Ohoama.  Isonokami no Maro would go on to take the mantle of Udaijin, and then eventually Sadaijin as well.  He would be raised up to the second rank, along with the famous Fujiwara no Fubito, who took the vacated position of Udaijin.  This meant that technically Maro was the senior of the two, though many people think that Fujiwara no Fubito held most of the actual power.  Regardless of that, Isonokami no Maro nonetheless would go on to become the highest ranking court noble before his eventual death in 717.  At that point he was 78 years old, by the reckoning of the day, and he had seen multiple sovereigns, several bloody conflicts, and the creation of two permanent capitals—Fujiwara kyo and Heijo kyo, in modern Nara.  He went from being a supporter in the Afumi court, on the wrong side of the Jinshin no Ran to become the highest ranking court noble in the land.  He would be granted the head of the Mononobe family and would continue to prosper as Isonokami.  It was truly a remarkable career over an incredible span of time. And there you have it.  A look at some of those that were sent out to the Dazaifu in Tsukushi.  In later years, the post of Dazai no Sochi would be seen more as a burden than a blessing, but at this point it was still a lucrative and powerful position.  Several of those involved in the Dazaifu or who held the position as Dazai no Sochi would go on to even more powerful positions back in Asuka.  Whilst this posting did move you further away from the politics—perhaps not always a bad thing—it also put you atop a structure where one had considerable power, authority, and autonomy, at least at this point. Next episode we'll get back to the court in Asuka and take a look at a little more of what is going on.  Before I end this, however, a quick administrative note about the podcast.  This creation is a labor of love.  It was started largely as a way to get myself to regularly dive into the Chronicles and really see what was going on.  In particular, I was excited about the Asuka period, because I don't think we really have enough of a sense of what life was like and what was going on back then.  It was clearly a very dynamic time, and yet we tend to see it through the lens of later Nara and Heian court culture, which was still very much evolving.  The stories that I *didn't* know about were what drew me to this project, and I hope that we've all learned a bit more as the project has continued. And we are reaching the end of the area that is covered by the main Chronicles, the Kojiki, the Nihon Shoki, and the Sendai Kuji Hongi, which have been our main guides through this period.  But that doesn't mean we are bringing things to a close. Next we have the Shoku Nihongi and many other grecords, and I am going to keep up with the project and the schedule as best I can.  In fact, it looks like I may be able to devote even more time to it in the near future as some drastic life changes are coming for me, such that I will no longer be working a 9-to-5 job while also trying to get this podcast out like clockwork twice a month—not to mention my other passion, teaching traditional Japanese martial arts here in the DC region at a local not-for-profit dojo.  This is happening as we are also in the process of building a house, traveling, and more.  But it does mean that we are going to be looking into alternative sources of funding beyond just donations.  We are eternally grateful to everyone who has donated, but I may end up doing something that I've been putting off for a while: allowing advertisements.  I want to do this so that we can continue to offer this for podcast for free, but hosting, staying up to date on sources, etc. does cost money.  I'm not looking to make a huge profit, but if we can at least get the podcast paying for itself, that would be a good start. Before I do that I'll look to find a way that we can get subscribers on Patreon and elsewhere ad-free copy.  I just need to figure that out, but once I do, I'll let you all know. So there you have it.  We aren't going to stop the podcast, but we may be adding a bit more to it in the future.  I hope, though, that we can do more beyond the historical chronicles.  For instance, did you know that we have an English translation of a 17th century cookbook up on our website, SengokuDaimyo.com?  I would love to redact those recipes and maybe provide some cooking videos for anyone who would want to try them.  A shoutout to Max Miller of Tasting History, who reached out to us about using a couple of our translations for his episodes on historical Japanese cooking – Max is a great guy and his series and cookbook are well worth following.  But there's a lot more to explore: one of my favorites so far that we've tried is "keiran", or "eggs": doughy balls filled with brown sugar and cooked in a miso based soup.  I don't know if there is anything like that still being served in Japan, but it's a strange and pleasant recipe and I would love to do that again and record it for everyone to try. All of this is in the works, and nothing will change immediately, but I wanted to keep you all in the loop.  Thank you so much for listening, I can't tell you how much it means. And of course, as always, 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.

A big part of the court are the actual court nobles, so this episode we are taking a look at some of the ones mentioned in the Chronicles for this reign. For more, check out https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-150 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 150: Nobles of Jitou Tennou's Court   Maro donned his light blue robes and made his way to the court.  As he arrived, the sun was just peaking over the horizon, and as it bathed the court in the golden morning light the dark shadows were dispelled, leaving in their wake a colorful scene, as various court officials headed this way and that, gathering in their offices to pick up on the work that they had left unfinished the day before. As an ohotoneri, Maro was often sent to and fro between the offices of the different departments. As such, he was able to see how they worked, and he wondered to himself which department would have the best opportunity for advancement.  His family had connections over at the Department of Prisons, and it was definitely a place he could make a name for himself, especially if he attached himself to one of the newly minted magistrates.  On the other hand, the Jingikan, the Ministry for Kami Matters, had some of the most important and sought after positions.  After all, no matter what the secular administration did, when there was no rain for the fields, it was the kami to whom the court turned.  And the members of the Jingikan who helped make those ceremonies happen were known to be well rewarded for their troubles. Perhaps he would be better off taking a more modest position, such as with the Jibu-sho, the Department of Civil Administration.  It was mostly focused on the maintenance and execution of the bureaucracy, and wasn't necessarily a place to seek the limelight, but perhaps that also offered some opportunity.  Do well in one position, and who knows what that could open up to you in the long run?  Maybe one day Maro could make it up to become a Nagon, a Counsellor, or even one of the Daijin, the great ministers at the very head of the council of state.Maro almost laughed at the thought, but he didn't put it aside entirely.  After all, as impossible as it might seem now, the world was still changing, and who knew what opportunities might be waiting just around the corner?   This episode continues our look at the reign of Uno no Sarara, aka Jitou Tennou.  I would note that we have now reached the last chapter of the Nihon Shoki, which ends with the end of Uno no Sarara's reign in 697.  In this chapter, we have not quite 11 years to cover, and we've already talked about the first three of those years, which featured succession issues and a long mourning time for Uno's husband Ohoama, aka Temmu Tennou, culminating in the sudden death of her only son, the Crown Prince and heir apparent, Prince Kusakabe, in 689.  We also went over what was happening on the continent, with powerful women like Uno no Sarara either on or behind the throne in Silla and the Tang dynasty.  To quickly recap the succession issues: When Kusakabe died, tthat left the throne in a somewhat tenuous position.  There were two other male heirs that would seem to have a claim on the throne as well.  The first was Prince Takechi, who was technically Ohoama's eldest son, but the Chroniclers claim that his late mother was not sufficiently royal for him to have a serious claim.  Then there was Prince Karu, the only known son of the late Crown Prince Kusakabe, and had been born 6 years earlier, in 683, to the Crown Prince and his wife, Princess Abe.  Princess Abe was a daughter of Naka no Oe, and a half-sister to Uno no Sarara.  She was actually a year older than Kusakabe, and would continue to look after the young Prince Karu.  So, Prince Karu was only about 7 years old when his father passed away: much too young to be taking the throne, let alone a firm hand in the politics of the time.  And given the mortality statistics of the time, there is so much that could happen to him before he reached the age of majority.  And remember, there were already some questions about legitimacy, and we already discussed the fact that about 30 nobles had gathered in support of Prince Ohotsu right after Ohoama's death.  Uno no Sarara had that whole issue quashed and Prince Ohotsu had died, but it was nonetheless a stark reminder that things could change quickly. So at this point in Uno no Sarara's reign, there is a great deal of uncertainty afoot, and there are quite a few individuals named in the Chronicles who stand to benefit from sticking their fingers into politics in one way or another.  This episode, we're going to look at some of those individuals, their roles in the court, and the effect they had on Yamato.  Some of those people named are particularly interesting in that they were involved in the conspiracy with Prince Ohotsu, and would continue to be highly influential in the government.  For example, Iki no Hakatoko, Nakatomi no Omimaro, and Kose no Tayasu, and Yakuchi no Wotokashi are all name-dropped, which we'll get into more later.  It feels significant, however, that there were some 30 nobles all told, and beyond these four and the apparent ringleaders, we don't learn anyone else's names.   The importance of prominent individuals in the court has been a constant theme in the Chronicles and in this podcast, so getting to know the court is definitely important. Moreover, during this time period as we get more and more written sources from which to work from we will see more and more information on individuals.  Some of that will come from the Nihon Shoki and the records that come after—the Shoku Nihongi.  Others, however, are from sources like the Man'yoshu, where bits of biographical data are found about the authors that they mention.  There are also family diaries and later genealogies.  Some of these sources are a bit more trusted than others, especially when they were compiled centuries later and we don't exactly know what sources they, themselves, were working on.  Still, even if it isn't 100% accurate, it does give us a picture of what was going on beyond just the royal family. I think it is also helpful to understand some of the overall court dynamics.  If you are familiar with the Heian period, especially around the time of things like the Tale of Genji, you are probably well acquainted with the Fujiwara family—I'll probably need to do an entire episode just on them at some point.  Essentially, there would come a time where almost the entire court was made up either of royals or of members of the Fujiwara clan, or uji.  In fact, even that distinction wasn't really accurate as the Fujiwara family had so intermarried with the Royal family that every sovereign—every Tennou and even most of their consorts—were directly related to members of the Fujiwara.  Not only that, but members of the Fujiwara family held the position of regent—whether the sovereign was of age or not—and effectively ruled the country, with the Tennou being largely relegated to a mouthpiece with ceremonial duties.  It would get so bad that we would see the splitting of the Fujiwara uji into smaller households, and the political fights were often between members of the different households of the same family.  There is a reason that a good portion of the Heian period is sometimes called the Fujiwara period. However, now during the late Asuka period, we see something a little different.  The marriage politics of the Soga had been violently suppressed about a half century earlier, and a lot of different names flourished in the Yamato court, as youmay have noticed any time I've rattled off a bunch of names and your eyes started crossing because of it.  But that's the reality we see: there were a lot of different families, and individuals, all jockeying for influence.  And they were in a period of disruption, where lots of change was happening.  That change meant there was also a lot of potential. And I hope you don't mind if I take a quick time-out here, but so often we read history and we forget to learn lessons from it, and one overarching lesson is:  if you are a part of an organization—a company, a club, government, school, or anything like that—one thing you are going to have to deal with is change.  It comes in many forms and happens whether or not you personally agree with it. It can be destructive and it can be frightening, because we often don't know what is on the other side of it, but it also presents opportunities.  After all, if you don't know what comes next it probably means other people don't, either.  And if you can be the one to provide direction you can have a huge influence on what comes next.  And change has been a constant theme in this period of Yamato history, in so many ways.  Take the reorganization of the government as one example: they had introduced these 8 departments, which had names and were set up in various ways, but it wasn't like you had experienced people to run them as they had been on the continent.  So you had names and the forms of things, but there were a lot of people figuring out just how to actually put this new structure into practice, and leverage them to do what they were supposed to do.  In the process, there were a lot of opportunities to innovate and figure out how to do it within the cultural milieu of the archipelago.  So all of these individuals, from these various families, all had opportunities staring them in the face.  They just had to figure out how to make the best of it. Now, don't get me wrong:  Those with the money, the connections, and the influence still had a leg up, and this was still a hierarchical society, where your family dictated, to some extent, your position in society.  The introduction of individual court rank, as opposed to just the kabane that ranked uji, was pushing against that, and had already caused a reformation that flattened a lot of the previous kabane into just eight distinctions, but those distinctions still existed.  Even had they not, simple matters of inherited wealth and the value of goods produced in a family's home territory would still have provided tremendous advantages.  But there isn't an indication of the kind of large-scale consolidation of resources that we will see in later periods, such as the Fujiwara example that we were just discussing.  Oh, sure, we aren't going to see a farmer suddenly make it big at court in some kind of rags-to-riches story, but at the upper end of society we still have a lot of apparent diversity. And so, let's get to know some of these individuals that the Chronicles tell us about.  Before we do that, though, let's recap a little bit about how the court worked. Every member of the court was effectively employed by the State.  They had an official job with duties they were supposed to oversee.  In the case of lower level functionaries, they were likely expected to actually do most of the work, while at the top of the hierarchy you had nobles who were more likely decision-makers, who would approve or disapprove of the work and direct strategic resources. Those working in the court had official uniforms—the round-necked garments of the continent.  What would be called a "caftan" farther west.  These were based on the foreign garments popular in the Tang court and elsewhere. The color and pattern of official clothing appears to be something that goes back to early in this new continental style government, and we see suggestions of color schemes from a relatively early age.  However, in 690 we see the clearest such outline of just what everyone was wearing. As a reminder, the court rank system of the day was made up of a Princely and a Commoner system.  Princely ranks originally included two ranks of the Myo class, and four of the Jou class, each rank divided into either "Great" or "Broad", for twelve Princely ranks, though honestly we only ever really see the four Jou class of ranks in use. Below that were the ranks for the common nobles—those with family names who did not have any kind of royal claim.    For them there were six classes of rank—Shou, Jiki, Gon, Mu, Tsui, and Shin, in that order.  Each class was made up of four ranks, which were further divided into upper and broad categories, creating 48 total ranks. Your rank determined your precedence at court—where you were sat, what jobs you were allowed to take on and, most importantly, the amount of money that you could expect to receive as part of a stipend.  Naka no Oe had previously consolidated the land-holdings and asserted claim over all of it.  The taxes from the households on the land went to the government to pay the stipends of the nobles in the court, who were, ostensibly, employees of that same government.  Your rank determined what you were owed, though this could also be augmented by various edicts. So there you go: rank in the court was tied to many of the things that the elites wanted, from wealth to status and access to various opportunities. The color of official clothing followed the rank system.  So Princes of the first two ranks of the Jou class were given robes of dark purple, and the third and four ranks were given robes of bright purple, which they shared with highest class of rank of the common nobles, the Shou rank class. Below that, nobles of the Jiki class would wear robes of dark red, and those of Gon would wear dark green.  The Mu rank class, the next down, was Light Green, and then Tsui was Deep Blue and Shin was Light blue. So in order you would see robes of Dark Purple, Bright Purple, Dark Red, Dark Green, Light Green, Deep Blue, and Light Blue.  The color gave you a certain indication of where the person sat in the overall hierarchy of the court, and provided you clues as to how you should address them, who would give deference, etc.  In later centuries, we are even told that deference was given in meetings, which is to say that once a person of higher rank provided input on a topic, nobody of lower rank was able to contradict them for fear of the consequences.  So it also told you who got the last word. This then was the world that the nobles of the court inhabited.  As we've seen in previous episodes it wasn't just bureaucratic work, but also banquets, archery contests, and Buddhist congregations and sutra readings.  There were rituals, dances, and diplomatic embassies—not to mention all of the ceremonies around the death or ascension of the sovereign.  In this world, one's reputation was everything.  You wanted to be seen as good at your job, but also, just like today, people were more likely to promote and support those they knew, and so it helped to have friends.  However, there were also a limited number of top spots, and so every promotion would have likewise meant plenty of disappointed nobles who didn't get the job.  But that is enough background.  Let's take a look at some of the nobles themselves, starting with the four from the Prince Ohotsu conspiracy.   The first name in the list is perhaps the least interesting.  His name is Yakuchi no Wotokashi.  Although he was the highest ranking of the four, he is also the least mentioned in the Chronicles and elsewhere, and we know very little about him.  So we'll talk about him later on, for completeness, but for now it may be best to skip him until we have a better handle on others in the court. In contrast, we know a bit more about his co-conspirators.  In fact, we've already talked about one of them at length:  Iki no Hakatoko.  We first heard about Iki no Hakatoko when talking about the Tang dynasty, and discussed him at length in Episode 123.  He was one of the members of the embassy to the Tang dynasty back in the early 660s that got delayed on account of Tang Gaozong initiating the war against Yamato's ally Baekje.  The fact that the Nihon Shoki directly pulls from Hakatoko's work, known to us, today, as the Iki no Hakatoko Sho, makes it one of the few early named written works that we know about.  Unfortunately, it is no longer extant except for what is preserved in the Chronicles, but it is still incredible that we have essentially an eyewitness account of what happened.  He would later be one of the escort envoys for one of the Tang embassies during the reign of Naka no Oe.  That he was then embroiled in the conspiracy with Prince Ohotsu would seem to be at odds with his standing, and yet after his pardon he eventually got back into the court's good graces.  In 695, about 9 years after the incident, he was assigned as an assistant envoy to Silla.  By that point he was of Mudaini rank, which was only about 35th in the overall scheme of things.  Later on we know he would work on the famous Taiho code, which was published in 701, and enacted a couple of years later.  It was here that he worked with the famous Fujiwara no Fubito—about whom we will discuss more, later—and although he would pass away in 703, this may be how his own writings came to find their way into the Chronicles, since Fubito is said to have had a large influence on them—as he had on many of the court's projects. Overall, Iki no Hakatoko may not have been the one in charge, but we see in his life an incredible career, much of it spent on multiple voyages across the ocean, whether on an embassy or as an escort.  He likely was highly proficient in the language of the Tang court—what we typically refer to, broadly, as Middle Chinese.  He also had direct experience with the Tang court and system, and so it makes sense that he was one of those helping to build an administrative state based on that system. If we were to imagine Hakatoko in the court of the day, at least in 695, he would have likely had light green colored robes, indicating that he was of the "Mu" class of ranks.  He would have worn the black gauze cap of the court and worn white hakama, or trousers, underneath.  His long, continental style, round-necked robes—likely relatively slim, with overly long, but narrow, sleeves—would have been tied closed in the front with a braided silk cord.  He likely worn black leather boots, covered in a light lacquer to protect them from the elements, with cloth insoles and perhaps a hint of brocade along the top.  He likely kept with him a ruler, and perhaps a few slips of paper or even just wood on which to take occasional notes.  A mid-level functionary of the court. We can compare and contrast Hakatoko to two other co-conspirators:  Nakatomi no Omimaro and Kose no Tayasu. We are given neither Omimaro's rank nor Tayasu's at this time.  It is interesting that they listed after Hakatoko, who is actually listed as having "Lower Shousen" rank—an older rank that was no longer in use at this point in time.  Also, both Nakatomi and Kose were Ason level families while Iki no Hakatoko is listed as being merely "Muraji".  So it seems that the Chroniclers were probably pulling from what they could find elsewhere, although where they found that Wotokashi had Jikikwoshi rank I have no idea, as we don't have any other record for him.  And it is possible that deference to Wotokashi and Hakatoko are as much a nod to their age as anything else, though probably not by much. Of four co-conspirators mentioned here—and I'm leaving out the two who were exiled or banished, as they were clearly not hanging around the court later—Nakatomi no Omimaro and Kose no Tayasu were probably from the most established families.  Indeed, we see both of their names show up multiple times in the record, giving us a better idea of who they might have been. Of the two, the name Nakatomi probably is more likely to ring a bell, as that as the surname of the famous Nakatomi no Kamatari—as well as the later Nakatomi no Kane.   Nakatomi no Kamatari was the head of court ritual when he and Naka no Oe kicked things off with the Isshi Incident and the Taika reforms, at which point he became the "Inner Prime Minister", or Naidaijin. Much of what we know of Omimaro comes from outside of the Chronicles themselves.  For instance, we are told that he was the son of Nakatomi no Kunitari, a cousin to the famous Kamatari, at least according to the 10th century Engi Shiki.  However, we have no other records of Kunitari, and so there is more than a little doubt cast as to whether or not that was actually the case.  Similarly, we are told that Omimaro married one of Kamatari's daughters, and was eventually adopted by Kamatari. Once again, the evidence for this is pretty thin, and it is unclear to me just how adoption worked at this point.  Certainly in later periods, adoption was often a way to ensure that a family had a male heir to ensure the family's continuity, and marrying someone's daughter and being adopted into the family is an age old tradition in the archipelago and Japan more generally.  At the same time, give some thought to what we know about this period: male primogeniture was not exactly the norm, although Confucian values had definitely made inroads into court.   The family headship often went to the eldest—or most prominent—family member.  This wasn't necessarily a son and often was a brother, a nephew, or even a cousin.  We have a few famous Nakatomi at this point in time, and all I can say for certain is that they were part of the same family.  Later traditions would make things a bit more clear. Whatever his parentage, our first encounter with Omimaro appears to be in the Ohotsu conspiracy, when he was arrested and then pardoned.  He shows up again in the record just three years later, along with Kose no Tayasu, as both were made judges, along with Fujiwara no Fubito—Nakatomi no Kamatari's biological son and eventual heir. In fact, there were nine judges, or magistrates, made that year, and they are listed in rank order.  The first is Prince Takeda, said to be a great-grandson of Nunakura, aka Bidatsu Tennou.  He was Joukwoshi rank, meaning he wore bright purple court robes, sitting in the lower half of the princely ranks.  He had been quite prolific ever since 681, when he was one of the Princes called to help bring together the Chronicles.  After being made a judge, he would continue in that position, it seems, and by 708 he would become the head of the Ministry of Prisons. After him we have Haji no Nemaro, in the dark red robes of the Jiki rank class.  Though someone of rank, less is known about Nemaro.  His father is said to be Haji no Mi, who was part of the forces that set out to Yamada-dera to capture—and likely kill—Soga no Kurayamadera.  Haji no Nemaro's son is Haji no Oi, who was sent to the Tang court but returned in 684, along with several repatriated soldiers.  Oi would assist with the Taihou code, but little more is said about him or his father. Other judges were Ohoyake no Maro, Fujiwara no Fubito—also of the Jiki class rank. Maro would go on to take a job as a jusenshi, responsible for minting coins, and Fubito would go on to reach the highest levels of government. Then there was Tahema no Sakurawi, Hodzumi no Yamamori, Nakatomi no Omimaro, Kose no Tayasu, and Ohomiwa no Yasumaro.  They were all Mudaishi rank at this point, wearing dark green.  Sakurai would go on to become the governor of Ise in 705, and then the governor of Musashi in 708.  Hodzumi no Yamamori we don't have as much information on, other than that he kept climbing the ranks, by 704 he had made Junior 5th rank, lower grade in the system that replaced the cap-ranks, and by 712 he made it to the senior fifth rank, lower grade. Ohomiwa no Yasumaro, on the other hand, would make it to the Senior 5th rank, lower grade by 707, and the upper grade by 708, when he was made the Dayu—the high minister in charge—of Settsu.  He would eventually make it into the Junior Fourth rank, upper grade, as the Minister of the Military Department, or Hyobu-sho. So this gives you an idea of the people with whom Nakatomi no Omimaro and Kose no Tayasu were rubbing elbows.  That they were made judges, responsible for justice, seems to say something as that would seem to be a powerful position.  At the same time, they are both lower ranked than the much younger Fujiwara no Fubito—but once again, he was the direct son of Nakatomi no Kamatari.  He also seems to have avoided any unpleasantness from the Jinshin no Ran as he was only 14 at the time, and though it does seem that the Nakatomi were generally knocked down a peg or two in court—thanks in large part  to the fact that Nakatomi no Kane had been one of the leaders of the Afumi court.  That and the whole thing with Prince Ohotsu may be why Omimaro was not exactly in the top ranks, but his appointments weren't nothing, either.  By 693, Omimaro would be granted the rank of Jikikwoshi, the lower fourth rank of the Jiki class.  In that entry he is recorded as Fujiwara no Omimaro.  I believe we discussed this a few episodes back, but the Fujiwara name was still new.  It had been granted to Nakatomi no Kamatari on his deathbed—or possibly even posthumously—by Naka no Oe, and to his family.  So technically that would seem to extend to the entire Nakatomi family.  And with Nakatomi no Kane having been one of the main figures on the losing side of the Jinshin no Ran, it was no doubt a savvy political move for Nakatomi courtiers to lean into the Fujiwara name, and they seem to have done just that.  It wouldn't be until later, in the reign just following this, that a new decree would straighten everything out, such that only the actual descendants of Fujiwara no Kamatari, such as Fujiwara no Fubito, would be allowed to use the Fujiwara name. Throughout this, I have focused mostly on Omimaro, but Kose no Tayasu was in the mix as well.  He, too, was made a judge and in 693 he would also be awarded the same Jikikwoshi rank.  In addition, in 689, he was made a "commissioner of good words", along with the Royal Prince Shiki and others.  This seems to be a singular position, and Aston suggests that it was their job to figure out the kind of auspicious language that should be used in the court.  What kind of language should be used by the sovereign and the courtiers in drawing up official edicts.  I imagine that they were figuring out the form to give to formal court documents as well as the kinds of titles and honorifics to use for the sovereign and the state more generally.  Of course, that is just an assumption based on Aston's understanding of what is, ultimately, a single line.  Still, it is clear that Tayasu was helping to make things happen. Tayasu would eventually go on to become the Minister of the Department of Ceremonies, the Shikibu-sho, and would later serve as a secretary to the Viceroy in Tsukushi—the Dazai Daini.  He would pass away in 710, one year before Omimaro. Before leaving Tayasu behind completely, I would like to point out his family name:  Kose.  The Kose family were one of the families granted the kabane of Ason, or Asaomi.  They had previously been known as the Kose no Omi, and had a long history in the court, claiming descent from the famous Takeuchi no Sukune, legendarily known as the first Oho-omi of Yamato.  Kose no Tokuda had been a supporter of Soga no Iruka, but after the Isshi Incident he supported Naka no Oe and eventually replace Abe no Uchimaro as Sadaijin—Minister of the Left.  Another Kose, Kose no Hito, would also rise in the government, becoming one of two Goshi-daibu made when Prince Ohotomo was appointed Dajodaijin.  The other was Ki no Ushi.  They were both in attendance and counted among the six who swore to protect and support Ohotomo, along with Nakatomi no Kane and others.  So they, too, found themselves on the wrong side of the Jinshin no Ran. In this case, however, it is unclear how much Tayasu was impacted by that.  He may have been the son of Kose no Shitano, brother to Kose no Hito, but the Kose were prolific in the court, with many people of the name.  The family would continue going through the Heian period.  Their fortunes ebbed and flowed, as did so many families, but they would eventually find themselves as Hatamoto to the Tokugawa shogun, so they never actually disappeared. Finally, let's talk about Yakuchi no Wotokashi.  As I mentioned earlier, he is actually one of the first names mentioned in the list of co-conspirators with Prince Ohotsu, suggesting that he outranked others in the group.  Indeed, he is noted as being of Jikikwoshi rank—fourth lower Jiki rank.  The bottom of the Jiki class, but that was still the third class from the top.  However, despite this, very little is actually said about him.  In fact, this is the only instance I could find of the name Yakuchi in the Nihon Shoki, at least in that spelling—there is also a Yakuchi no Uneme, but it is spelled differently and is probably not related.  It is also the only evidence of the name Wotokashi.  That means we don't even see him in the list of names being granted Ason in the first place. It is quite possible that Yakuchi was a name he took later and that he was from another family.  Indeed, there are a couple of traditions around Wotokashi that suggest he was the founder of the Yakuchi family in Shinano.  Indeed, there is a Yakuchi family that comes out of Shinano, near Adzumino.  And Shinano was one of the places that Ohoama had sent people to examine as another site for an alternative capital, and Prince Mino and others had gone to check it out.  So maybe Wotokashi headed out there—or his descendants, anyway—and decided to try and make a go of it.  Proponents of this theory also connect Wotokashi to a line descended from the Soga family, which would certainly explain his prominence.  There are others, however, who claim that the Yakuchi family out of Shinano is actually descended from the Otomo, suggesting that the similarities in the name are just coincidental, which is also possible.  Ultimately, our sources fail us here, and so we just have speculation.  It is possible that even with the pardon, Wotokashi was just never able to regain the trust of the sovereign or his position in court, and so whether he took a hike for the hinterlands or just faded from the picture it is hard to say. With that, let's take a look at just two more courtiers, and what kinds of lives and careers they had at court, at least from what we can see.  These two we've also mentioned in passing:  Fuse no Miushi—whom Aston transliterates as Miaruji—and Ohotomo no Miyuki. Fuse no Miushi and Ohotomo no Miyuki were both mentioned as performing eulogies for Ohoama, though there is more to them than just that.  We'll start with Fuse no Miushi, who is said to have been the son of none other than the Taika era Sadaijin, or Minister of the Left, Abe no Uchimaro.  You may recall that Abe no Uchimaro was the Sadaijin under Karu no Ohokimi, aka Koutoku Tennou, along with the Udaijin, Soga no Kurayamadera.  They were both supporters of Naka no Oe, though much of the Chronicles focus appeared to be more on Kurayamadera than on Uchimaro. We don't know when Miushi was born, nor when he received the name "Fuse", the name by which he is known when we first meet him in the Chronicles.  That family name only shows up two other times in the Chronicles.  Based on other sources, it seems that the Abe family was divided at some point into the Fuse and the Hikida, likely because it became too large and they needed to distinguish the different parts of the family.  It is said that Fuse no Miushi served as a retainer to Ohoama during the Jinshin no Ran.  That, along with his family connections, helped secure him a good place in the government.  By 686, we see him pronouncing the eulogy for Ohoama's funeral on behalf of the Dajokan, the Counil of State.  He was already Jikidaishi, one rank above the standard Jikikwoshi, but still clothed in the same dark red robes.  In 687, he is again pronouncing the eulogy, but this time we are told that his a Nagon, or councilor, a rather prestigious posting that would later get broken up into three different levels:  Dainagon, Chunagon, and Shonagon.  For my Heian fans out there, that last is the same Shonagon as in the name of the famous poet, author, diary-keeper, and all around queen of snark, Sei Shonagon.  By 688, pronouncing the Eulogy seems to have become an annual event for Miushi, only this time he teamed up with Ohotomo no Miyuki.  The two of them seem to have had similar careers, and would, for a time, come up together through the ranks. Ohotomo no Miyuki is said to have been born in 646, though that isn't recorded in the Nihon Shoki and comes from other sources.  The Ohotomo family goes back quite a ways, and we are told that his father was Ohotomo no Nagatoko, who served as Minister of the Right under Naka no Oe.  However, in 672, the Ohotomo, including Miyuki, sided with Ohoama in the Jinshin no ran.  In 675 he was made Tayu while Prince Kurikuma was made Director of Military Affairs.  He then drops out of the narrative until 688, when he is pronouncing the eulogy with Fuse no Miushi. Miushi would go on, two years later, to present the formal congratulations from the court to the Queen upon her ascencion to the throne, and then the following year, 691, both Miushi and Miyuki were granted the rank of Jikidaiichi, the highest rank in the Jiki class, along with 80 households to support them and their families.  This brought both of their stipends up to roughly 300 households each.  Then, in 694, they were both raised in rank again, this time to Shoukwoushi.  Only one rank up, yet they went from the top of the Jiki class to the bottom of the Shou class.  They would have gotten new robes of Bright Purple to indicate their new status, and they each had their stipends increased by the taxes of 200 households each.  At the same time, they were also acknowledged as senior members of their houses.  That means that Miushi was considered the head of the Fuse branch of the Abe family and Miyuki was now acknowledged as the head of the entire Ohotomo family. Two years after that, in 696, they were each given 80 retainers to support them.  Fuse no Miushi is actually mentioned at that time as Abe no Miushi.  That same year, we again see Fujiwara no Fubito show up, but with only 50 retainers.  Fubito would eventually rise to the top of the court food chain, but at this point, it was still in the hands of courtiers like Fuse no Abe no Miushi and Ohotomo no Miyuki. Fuse no Miushi would go on to have an incredible career.  He would become Dainagon and eventually he would become the Udaijin, the Minister of the Right, one of the highest positions anyone could hope to achieve at court. Ohotomo no Miyuki would not make it quite so far.  Like Miushi, he made it to Dainagon, but he died in the first month of 701, just 55 years old.  He had made it to the third rank, and he was posthumously granted the title of Udaijin—the position was vacant at the time—and granted second rank.  His colleague, Abe no Miushi, would go on to take the position only four months later and serve for a couple of years before passing away himself. These two would have worked closely together throughout their careers, and the fact that they were raised in rank and position on similar timelines suggests to me that they ran together in very close circles.  They would have been working in similar positions, at the same levels of the government.  They would have been going to the same parties and partaking in the same banquets and entertainments.   They were no doubt rivals, in a sense, but also equals.  Both families would go on, even as the Fujiwara clan came to dominate the politics of the era, the Ohotomo and Abe would continue to hold power in the court during the Nara period, though eventually it would decline.  The Ohotomo would eventually become just the Tomo, to avoid conflicting with the name of a slater sovereign, and the main house would eventually decline, though branch families would continue to claim descent from the Ohotomo into to the Edo period. The Abe would continue, similarly pushing against the Fujiwara.  The most famous Abe was probably Abe no Seimei, who became known for his skills as an Onmyouji, or master of Yin-yang divination and magic.  The Tsuchimikado branch of the Abe family would continue that tradition, and it would come to largely define the main branch of the family. I hope that gives a bit of an idea of what was going on in the court and the kinds of careers that people were looking at and what was happening.  We cannot get into every single person, but I'm going to try and note some of the more prominent courtiers and what they were doing.  It isn't always clear from the Chronicles what was going on between the various houses, but one can largely assume that the court was highly political.  Different factions were vying for power and position.  Sitting atop all of it, Uno no Sarara would have to perform her own kind of balancing act, doling out rewards and punishments as necessary, and ensuring to place the right people in positions of power and authority.  On the one hand, that ambition was a motivating factor, keeping the people of the court focused on the tasks at hand and ensuring that the court was running smoothly.  On the other hand, too much power in the hands of any one individual could cause them to get ideas that they should have even more.  The main bulwark against this was everyone else in the system—the checks and balances were literally the other court nobles, who weren't going to just let someone  take power unless there was something in it for them as well.  More on that as we watch this reign unfold. But for now, thank you so much for listening and downloading the podcast.  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.

The Lost Princely State of Khairpur - Sindh ka Shehzad - Faiz Mahal, Kot Diji and Khairpur #TPE

Hope you had a great Christmas - in this episode of The Fluffy Slipper Lounge the music in "Princely" - either written by or performed by Prince #TheFluffySlipperLounge #RadioSouthland

We celebrate our 500th episode — or Episode 500 — by going back to the start. Featuring: tranches, “Jeffy,” Midtown Martini, Princely peppercorns, Bashar al-Assad, Mr. Big, and Israel. Hit the tip line: (646) 801-1129 | tips@trueanon.com Discover more episodes at podcast.trueanon.com

Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000 (Cambridge UP, 2025) is about the reciprocal relationship between cinema and the city as two institutions which co-constitute each other while fashioning the socio-political currents of the region. It interrogates imperial, postcolonial, socio-cultural, and economic imprints as captured, introduced, and left behind by politics of cinema, in the site of Hyderabad. It traverses through the makings and remakings of Hyderabad as princely city, linguistic capital city, and global city, studied through capital, labour, and organization of the film industry. It brings together diverse, and rich historical material to narrate the social history of Hyderabad, over a hundred years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000 (Cambridge UP, 2025) is about the reciprocal relationship between cinema and the city as two institutions which co-constitute each other while fashioning the socio-political currents of the region. It interrogates imperial, postcolonial, socio-cultural, and economic imprints as captured, introduced, and left behind by politics of cinema, in the site of Hyderabad. It traverses through the makings and remakings of Hyderabad as princely city, linguistic capital city, and global city, studied through capital, labour, and organization of the film industry. It brings together diverse, and rich historical material to narrate the social history of Hyderabad, over a hundred years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

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

Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000 (Cambridge UP, 2025) is about the reciprocal relationship between cinema and the city as two institutions which co-constitute each other while fashioning the socio-political currents of the region. It interrogates imperial, postcolonial, socio-cultural, and economic imprints as captured, introduced, and left behind by politics of cinema, in the site of Hyderabad. It traverses through the makings and remakings of Hyderabad as princely city, linguistic capital city, and global city, studied through capital, labour, and organization of the film industry. It brings together diverse, and rich historical material to narrate the social history of Hyderabad, over a hundred years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000 (Cambridge UP, 2025) is about the reciprocal relationship between cinema and the city as two institutions which co-constitute each other while fashioning the socio-political currents of the region. It interrogates imperial, postcolonial, socio-cultural, and economic imprints as captured, introduced, and left behind by politics of cinema, in the site of Hyderabad. It traverses through the makings and remakings of Hyderabad as princely city, linguistic capital city, and global city, studied through capital, labour, and organization of the film industry. It brings together diverse, and rich historical material to narrate the social history of Hyderabad, over a hundred years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000 (Cambridge UP, 2025) is about the reciprocal relationship between cinema and the city as two institutions which co-constitute each other while fashioning the socio-political currents of the region. It interrogates imperial, postcolonial, socio-cultural, and economic imprints as captured, introduced, and left behind by politics of cinema, in the site of Hyderabad. It traverses through the makings and remakings of Hyderabad as princely city, linguistic capital city, and global city, studied through capital, labour, and organization of the film industry. It brings together diverse, and rich historical material to narrate the social history of Hyderabad, over a hundred years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Film City Urbanism in India: Hyderabad, from Princely City to Global City ,1890-2000 (Cambridge UP, 2025) is about the reciprocal relationship between cinema and the city as two institutions which co-constitute each other while fashioning the socio-political currents of the region. It interrogates imperial, postcolonial, socio-cultural, and economic imprints as captured, introduced, and left behind by politics of cinema, in the site of Hyderabad. It traverses through the makings and remakings of Hyderabad as princely city, linguistic capital city, and global city, studied through capital, labour, and organization of the film industry. It brings together diverse, and rich historical material to narrate the social history of Hyderabad, over a hundred years.

This episode looks at the Kabane and Court Rank systems in light of the changes made during this reign, in 684 and 685.  We go a bit more in depth on the kabane, what they were, and how they were organized, prior to the reorganization that took place at the end of the 8th century into just 8 kabane, total.   For more, check out our blogpost:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-136   Rough Transcript   Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 136: Kabane and Court Rank   Mononobe no Muraji no Ujimaro was in a foul mood.  Once more he had been passed over for promotion, and so he continued to toil away, tallying reports as they came in from the various provinces across the kingdom. Meanwhile, Hasama no Atahe no Woshibi was now his superior, with an exalted rank and the generous stipend that came with it.  Ujimaro fumed—he was Mononobe, and his family had once all but ruled Yamato.  Though they had been perhaps reduced in circumstances since then, they still proudly held to their place as a Muraji family—a distinction that demonstrated their superior pedigree.  Meanwhile, Woshibi was from the Hasama family.  Sure, his relative, Nemaro, had been one of those on the front lines in the recent conflict, but still, his family was only atahe.  Honestly, a Mononobe was supposed to take orders from someone of an Atahe family? But this was the new way of things.  The ancient traditions were no longer enough—you had to work hard and make sure way up through this new court rank system if you wanted to succeed.  Ujimaro grumbled, but there was little he could do in the moment.  Nonetheless, he couldn't help but think about how the natural order of the world was somehow turned upside down…     Greetings and welcome back, everyone. We are working our way through the reign of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tennou.  This reign spanned fourteen years, if you include the Jinshin year of 672, though it is broken into two narratives in the Nihon Shoki.  The first chapter covers the year of the disturbance, the Jinshin no Ran, when Ohoama fought with the Afumi court, who supported his nephew, Ohotomo, on the throne.  We've covered that turbulent period previously.  The second chapter covers the other 13 years of Ohoama's reign. Last episode we covered the first year of Ohoama sitting properly on the throne.  The year 673 included Ohoama's ascension; the confirmation, continuation, and evolution of the Ritsuryou system instituted during Naka no Oe's time; as well as various ceremonies around Ohoama's ascension to the throne, including the first verifiable “Daijosai”, the specialized harvest ceremony for the first harvest season of the reign. This episode we are going to try and tackle something that people have sent in questions about.  We've touched on it here and there, but I really want to get into the Kabane system—that ancient practice of family titles that were like a collective rank system.  It was during Ohoama's reign that the court made major reforms to the kabane system and restructured it pretty extensively.  At the same time, the kabane system was gradually being replaced by other systems of displaying one's status in society—such as the court rank system, which was also revised this reign.  Eventually, without the same purpose as before, kabane would fade away, with a few remaining as honorifics and titles, but at this point they were still important.  So we'll get into both of these status systems  and discuss a little bit about what that meant for the people of the late 7th century court. From the beginning of Ohoama's reign, the court had continued to implement the cap-rank system, most recently amended in 664, by Ohoama's brother, Naka no Ohoye.  With the new rank system of 685, the format changed considerably. To better understand this, let's talk about the rank systems in Yamato and how we have gotten to this point.  We'll want to start with the kabane, and to do that, I want to take us back to a much earlier time. As you may recall, in the oldest stories in the Nihon Shoki, the Kojiki, and the Sendai Kuji Hongi, most individuals only have a single name, or they are known by the name of a location and a title.  Iware Hiko, for example, with Hiko and Hime being general masculine and feminine terms for elites from a given area.  From this, it would appear as though there was no such thing as a “family” name in early Wa societies. As I've pointed out before, that does not mean that there were not families, of course, or that lineage and family relationships were not important; we do see familial relationships, and we see concepts of lateral inheritance—from brother to brother rather than necessarily from father to son.  The rules behind such inheritance seem to have been rather malleable, however. And that all makes some sense in a society where most people are dealing with the people of their village and surrounding communities—there is no need for anything more than a given name.  Otherwise one's place of origin or their profession could easily be used to identify any given individual.  Even the elites would be known by the territory they control. I mention all of this because some of the earliest terms we see as “kabane” appear to be titular in nature—that is to say they are derived from ancient titles.  Hiko, Hime, Wake, Mimi, and Ushi are all terms we see from the ancient past, commonly found in the names of sovereigns, among other things. It isn't until some time in about the 5th century that we start to see the family units arise.  These started as something like a corporate group or guild: Those who looked after horses were all labelled as Umakai, while those who worked jade and made magatama jewels were labelled as Tamatsukuribe.  These groups or “be” were familial in that they were structured much as a family, with a single family head.  That gave the ruler a single point of contact to presumably administer all of the work that particular corporate group was expected to perform.  Furthermore, the name passed to their children, who would presumably have been brought up in the family business.  For some of these families, rather than overseeing a business, craft, or similar thing, they were, instead, administrators of a given region or locality.  We might think of these as chiefly families, overseeing domains of varying sizes.  These families were known as “uji”.  This is often translated in English as “clan”, which is an overloaded term used to describe a group that all claim familial descent from a single putative ancestor—whether real or fictional.  Many of the earliest uji were created as “-be” groups:  Abe, Mononobe, Imbe, Kataribe, etc., but they eventually started dropping “-be” altogether: Inukahi, Umakahi, Soga, Nakatomi, Wani, and the like.  For these Uji, many were connected to various deities, or kami, from which they claimed descent.  These kami are thought to be some of the original ujigami, though that term later came to be applied to various kami that were seen as guardians of a particular locale, and later uji need not claim direct descent from a kami for it to be special.  For example, the main deity of Kasuga Taisha, the shrine built in Nara in the 8th century, said to house the ujigami of the Nakatomi and Fujiwara, primarily pays worship to Takemikazuchi no Mikoto and Futsunushi no Mikoto, deities brought from the east.  Takemikazuchi is considered an ujigami of the two uji, but the oyagami, the actual parent or ancestral kami from which they claim direct lineage, would be Ame no Koyane no Mikoto, who is also worshipped as the third deity at the shrine. The fact that these uji operate more like clans means that they were made up of numerous family units, who might be scattered across the archipelago.  At the head of each uji would have been a central family to provide the uji leadership and interface with the court.  Nonetheless, they were all considered the same uji, and a rise in the fortunes of the uji applied to all of its disparate members. To be clear, there were titles attached to individual names, Sukune, for example, which is one we've encountered several times in the narrative.  Professor Kan'ichi Asakawa, in his work “The Early Institutional Life of Japan”, provides an overview of some of these corporate titles, that came to be known as “kabane”.     In all likelihood, they all had a straightforward meaning at some point.  “Omi” means minister, for example, and continues to be used in that sense—as well as as a title—up through at least the 7th century.  Another common kabane that we see is “Muraji”, which appears to originally reference someone in charge of a village or similar polity.  Asakawa suggests that it comes from Mura no Ushi, with “Ushi” meaning something like “lord” and showing up elsewhere as well.  “Kimi” also appears to be demonstrating some kind of hegemony over a land. Beyond that, here are a few others that we have seen:  Atahe—or Atai—as well as Suguri, which appears to truly be a lower level village headmaster.  Then there is Agata-nushi, aka Agata No Ushi, the Lord of an Agata, or district.  Asakawa also notes Wake, Inaki, Sukune, Kishi, and Tamitsukasaas other kabane. The kabane are interesting in that they do appear to be precedental—that is to say that there does appear to be some kind of hierarchy in terms of the social position of each uji.  The kabane did not, however, confer any particular resources.  There was no stipend attached to a given kabane, though certain court positions were only open to members of uji with the appropriate kabane.  Perhaps most notable in this are the Omi and the Muraji, which were the only two family types that held the supreme court positions—what we would likely refer to as “Prime Minister”.  These included families such as the Ohotomo no Muraji, the Mononobe no Muraji, the Kose no Omi, and the Soga no Omi.  The heads of these families had a special title—the Ohomuraji or the Oho-omi, the Great Muraji and the Great Omi.  These positions were placed at the top of the court system, allowing them unrivaled access to the levers of power.  Typically there were two to three of these individuals at any given time, down to as few as one during the height of the Soga no Omi's power and influence. It is unclear if all uji at the Omi and Muraji level had a designated Oho-Omi or Oho-Muraji at their head, or if that was only for those who were in actual positions at the top of the court structure. It is also unclear if the precedence between the Omi and Muraji was always fixed.  Early on, we see Muraji houses that appear to be holding the majority of the powerful positions, and later we see the ascendancy of the Omi households.  By the 7th century, however, it appears that Omi came first, followed by Muraji, based on the order that individuals are frequently named in the Chronicles, among other things. As for the other titles, some of them we believe we know, and others are more of a mystery.  The origin of “wake” and “kimi” are rather obscure, though they both appear to have something to do with territorial rule and belong to uji that lay some kind of claim to a blood relationship with the royal house.  Some of them may have been rulers in their own lands, prior to Yamato hegemony. “Inaki” may be related to rice castle, or storehouse, and seems to have referred to one of the smallest local units.  That also means we rarely see it in the narrative, which tended to focus on those more closely tied to the court and the royal house.  Asakawa notes that the Atahe, or Atai, seems to be for uji who possessed some amount of private land and private soldiery, but we don't know much more.  Asakawa also points out that the Suguri, Tamitsukasa, and the Kishi kabane all seem to be related to groups with ties to the continent—perhaps descended from immigrant groups.  The Kuni no Miyatsuko and the Agata-nushi are the titles with the clearest seeming ties to territorial hegemony.  “Kuni” is the term for the ancient lands, such as Yamato, Kibi, Kenu, Koshi, etc. There seem to be around 140 such “kuni” described in the archipelago.  Agata, on the other hand, were much smaller districts.  While some of these district names have survived, it is hard, if not impossible, to know exactly how many of them there were. Then you have this term: “Miyatsuko”.  Breaking that apart, he translates it as child or servant—ko—of the exalted house—miya.  Taken together, these appear to reference the elite families in charge of overseeing territorial lands.We also see another term that uses “Miyatsuko”:  Tomo no Miyatsuko.  Unlike Kuni no Miyatsuko, Tomo no Miyatsuko is a term representing a group, rather than a kabane attached to an individual family.  When the sovereign addresses the court, for example, he typically addresses the Omi, the Muraji, the Tomo no Miyatsuko and the Kuni no Miyatsuko. Asakawa proposed that, technically, all of these could fall under the term “Miyatsuko” as servants of the sovereign's house.  Rather than focusing on specifics of all the myriad kabane, however, Asakawa treats them broadly as the Omi, Muraji, Tomo no Miyatsuko, and Kuni no Miyatsuko.  The Omi and the Muraji we already touched on.  They were the houses that could, among other things, supply the court with their Ohoomi and Ohomuraji—their prime ministers.  So it makes some sense.  The Tomo no Miyatsuko and the Kuni no Miyatsuko are a little more tricky  to pin down, but Asakawa suggests that, ased on what we can tell, the heads of the Omi, Muraji, and Tomo no Miyatsuko likely attended court on a regular basis and lived nearby, whereas the Kuni no Miyatsuko were those whose heads dwelt elsewhere, likely because they were the local elites in various other areas of the archipelago.  This is in the name—the term “tomo” might be thought of as being “with” someone, and at one point it is suggested  that the Tomo no Miyatsuko are related to those who traced kinship back to the kami who originally descended from the Plain of Heaven.  However, among the myriad kabane, not all of them were strictly local, and we find some kabane doing double duty for both local and geographically dispersed uji.  Thus he also suggested that Kuni no Miyatsuko, though it was a kabane in its own right, also represented the other forms of territorial elite titles—all those who did not regularly attend the court, but instead administered their own lands.   Richard Miller, in his work, “Ancient Japanese Nobility”, does provide a suggested hierarchy of the kabane.  I don't know if I completely agree, as I think that it was a lot more complicated across the entire archipelago, but nonetheless I'll add the information to the blogpost page if you want to see at least one suggestion of relative precedence between uji of different kabane. Now let's not forget that not everyone was a member of an uji.  For one thing, the royal family—both the sovereign's immediate family and Princes who claimed a more distant relationship—were exempt from the Uji-Kabane system.  Also, the commoners, those who actually toiled and worked the land, likewise would not have been included in a given Uji.  The Uji may have directed production, and even included certain artisans, but it still only included those who were tied, in some way, to the government. Now while the Uji-Kabane system may have started as titles with actual meanings—that is to say that the names and titles were essentially indicative of a group's role in society—it didn't take too long for it to become a little more abstract.  After all, generation after generation, people change.   Individuals vied for power and position in the court and elsewhere, and one's uji may rise, and even fall, depending on how they were able to succeed in the political climate of the day.  This was augmented with the marriage politics which no doubt was conducted as much between the elite families as well as with the royal family.  And then there were the branch or cadet families.  For example, let's say that the head of a family has four children.  Each one of those children could theoretically succeed their father—if his own siblings don't do so.  With each generation, the familial ties get weaker, and smaller, sub-houses could form.  If the uji was geographically dispersed, then local branches could become more or less independent. All of this seems to have caused not a small bit of confusion, and thus we get an edict in the last months of 682: it instructed all of the uji to ensure that they had a senior member—an uji-no-kami or ko-no-kami, with “kami”, in this instance, meaning top or head, rather than deity.  This family head was to be reported to the government, presumably so that the government knew exactly who was in charge of each family.  If there were too many people in a given uji, then they were encouraged to split themselves up and submit their own heads, with government officials adjudicating the decision.  Finally, they are exhorted not to include any people that do not belong. A few things this seems to indicate.  First is that the government did not have a handle on all of the different families out there, which makes some sense.  It had been many generations since the uji had been initially set up, and the State had gone through a lot in that period.  It may also indicate that there were those making a false claim to a family name specifically for the added prestige.  How difficult would it be to claim to be a member of a prominent family that just happened to have been from a far-flung, out of the way branch?  We see this in the 10th century with the Oushu Fujiwara—a family in Tohoku, around the region of Hiraizumi, who claimed descent from the famous Fujiwara family.  Of course, the Fujiwara family by that point had grown so large, that it was next to impossible to check any such claim.  How much moreso in the age before written records were common? We've seen examples where different parts of a given Uji were recorded separately.  For example, the Aya were split early on into different groups, with the Yamato no Aya being perhaps the most often referenced, but we also have the Kawachi no Aya—the Aya from Kawachi.  And then we have the Inukahi, where we see the Ama no Inukahi and the Agata no Inukahi, referring to the Inukahi of the Sea and the Inukahi of the District, though sometimes just a reference to “Inukahi”. Of course, it also seems that these branch families maintained the kabane of the original. Over time, uji were promoted, but rarely were they demoted.  And so, over time, more and more uji are counted among the ranks of the Omi and the Muraji. At the same time, the court was changing.  With the Taika reforms and the development of the ritsuryo codes, the Uji-kabane system was no longer required for managing the realm.  Furthermore, the government was centralizing land and the produce thereof.  And so they instituted the cap-rank system, a more explicit system of rank within the court that was held by the individual, not by the entire uji.  In addition, cap-rank could be tied directly to a stipend, making the court officers more dependent on the central government, rather than on their own uji's resources. Early on, it is likely that higher cap rank was given to members of the more highly exalted uji, as those were the uji that also filled the upper echelons of government and therefore would have been best prepared to succeed in those roles.  However, as things continued, it was likely that it was going to get even more confused.  Or they would need to raise up all of the families to Omi and Muraji status, but as that happened, the meaning of the kabane themselves became less and less clear.  After all, if everyone is an “Omi” and “Muraji” than, really, nobody is. In 681, we are told that they began to put together a law code, and later a law code of 92 articles is said to have been established.  However, it seems it was still being updated, and wasn't until 689, after Ohoama's death, that all 22 volumes would be distributed to the various governors.  It became known as the Kiyomihara Codes.  In 684, Ohoama's reforms attacked the problem of the Kabane.  The record complains that the various titles had become confused.  That there were people out there taking kabane they were not entitled to, and just a general confusion because it no longer aligned quite so well with the evolving cultural norms of the new Yamato state.  Early attempts to deal with this appear to have been, in the years since they began codifying it all in 681, to raise up families and individuals to the rank of “Muraji”.  There are several records where lists of families are all given “Muraji”.  In the case of individuals being granted Muraji, it is unclear if that was going just to them or to their entire family, though there are some examples where it seems an individual was granted the title and then their uji was separately awarded the same. This seems like an initial attempt to straighten things out.  With the new bureaucratic system and the court ranks, no doubt there were people of worth from uji with less prestigious kabane who now outranked individuals from uji that were, at least on paper, more prestigious.  This can't really have solved the problem.  If anything, it just watered down the meaning of “muraji” even further, since now everyone and their brother seemed to have been granted that title. Ohoama's solution was to pare down the system to only eight kabane, total.  Some of these were existing kabane, and others were entirely new. At the bottom of this new system was the title of Inaki, which had been about the lowest territorial kabane of the existing system.  I suspect that this included all of those families that were still below the rank of Muraji, who had not been raised up in the preceding years.  However, from there it immediately jumped up to the Muraji and Omi, in that order.  And so the kabane that were previously at the top of the system were now towards the bottom.  That way, they could “promote” families into greater kabane, without needing to “demote” a bunch of existing families at the same time. Above the Omi were mostly new kabane, except for one.  The first was “Michinoshi”, a Master of the Way.  It is unclear what this was intended for, as we aren't told who was promoted to this kabane.  Based on the name, it is thought that this may have been for uji that had demonstrated a mastery of learning or perhaps some other pursuit, such as medicine, science, crafts, etc. Above the Michinoshi title was the kabane of Imiki, the fourth of eight.  This may mean something like “One who arrived”.  Some suggest that it may have originally been “imaki”.  Richard Miller, in his work “Ancient Japanese Nobility” suggests that this was effectively the equivalent of the old title of “Atahe”.  That said, most of those who received this kabane had previously been promoted to the old title of “Muraji”, though before that they were mostly Atahe, or else Obito, Kishi, or Miyatsuko. There is a thought that Imiki had something to do with “coming” and was meant for uji descended from immigrant families.  Miller notes that this is not immediately born out in the data from the Nihon Shoki, where we see about a 50:50 split between immigrant and native uji.  However, in the following chronicle, the Shoku Nihongi, we see about 100 of 150 of uji with the Imiki kabane  that were of immigrant origins, so 2/3rds.  That still isn't entirely conclusive, but does add some weight to the idea. Continuing to the 3rd kabane from the top we are at “Sukune”.  This was previously used as a kabane, but from what I can tell it was given to an individual and was not passed down to the entire uji.  Now it was something different.  Miller suggests that this kabane was for those uji who claimed descent from one of the kami, but not necessarily from the royal lineage. In contrast, Asomi, later read as “Ason”, the 2nd of the 8 kabane, literally reads as “court minister”.  It appears to be for those who claimed some connection to the royal family.  It is notable that Ohoama awarded this to some 52 families during his reign.  Compare that with making 11 Imiki and 13 Mabito, the next and highest ranking kabane.  Asomi would be the most common kabane among those at the top of the court bureaucracy.  Of all of them, this one seems to linger, perhaps because it is the kabane that was given to the Fujiwara family, who then carried that with them into later centuries. Finally, there is Mabito.  Mabito means something like “True Person” or perhaps “Upright Person”, and it seems to have gone exclusively to families with the old kabane of “kimi”.  An examination of the thirteen uji in this group indicates that they were those with close royal ties, who claimed a descent closely related to that of the royal family.  So those were the new kabane.  Although they were declared in 684 and handed out through the following year, we do see some individuals referenced with these kabane earlier in the narrative.  This is likely just due to the fact that it is how they were eventually known, and so they are given an anachronistic kabane, which was probably much easier for the compilers than trying to make sure that all of the names were exactly correct for each record. With the kabane thus dealt with, Ohoama then went on to make some major changes to the court rank system as well.  In many ways I would say that his ranks were quite novel—previous changes to the cap-rank system had largely been additions or slight modifications but had left many of the names intact with each change.  As such, the rank system decreed in 664 was really just an update to the previous cap-rank system of 649 and earlier.  And so even through 664 you still had things like “Greater brocade” as someone's rank.  Towards the end of his reign, though, along with other reforms to the government, Determining what exactly the rank system was at any given point can be a little confusing.  Depending on the record being used, names are sometimes referenced anachronistically: That is they are given with the ultimate title, kabane, or rank by which they were known. This could sometimes be after multiple phases of reform, and so the honors mentioned may not necessarily reflect that individual's ranks and position at the date of the entry.  Also the various rank systems are close enough, sharing many of the various rank names, such that it isn't immediately obvious if something different is being used. This is true of both kabane and court ranks.  Furthermore, as many individuals may only be mentioned once or twice, we may not always have a lot of data on how things may have changed.    The new system enacted in 685 was different in several ways that make it quite distinct.  In fact, we see in the record of this reign earlier mentions of individuals where their rank is given in terms of the new system even in records predating 685.  So what did that look like? The rank system of 685 still used various signifiers, which broke things up into categories, but these were broken up into 2-4 numerical grades:  Ichi-I, Ni-I, San-I, Shi-I, or first rank, second rank, third rank, and fourth rank.  This gets us closer to what was eventually an almost purely numerical system.  Each grade was then divided further into “Larger”: “Dai”; or “Broader”: “Kou” This is also where we see Princely ranks enumerated for the first time.  As we noted, previously, princely rank was something that we started to see at the beginning of this reign in the Nihon Shoki, with Prince of the third rank, etc. In 685, however, we get an actual proclamation. The Princely ranks are broken into two large categories—the bright, or Myou, ranks and the Pure, or Jou ranks.  There were two grades of Myou—Ichi-I and Ni-I, and four grades of Jou—Ichi-I, Ni-I, San-I, and Shi-I.  Each grade was further divided twice into large, dai, or broad, kou.  So you had Myou-dai-ichi-I, Myou-kou-ichi-I, Myou-dai-ni-I, Myou-kou, ni-i… et cetera.  That translates to something like Large First Bright rank, Broad First Bright rank, Large Second Bright rank, and Broad Second Bright rank.  This would continue with “Jou” replacing “Myou”, and provided a total of 12 princely ranks. As for how they were divvied out, we only see the granting of “Jou” ranks.  In fact, Kusakabe, the Crown Prince himself is given Broader Pure First Rank (Jou-kou-ichi-i).  His brother, Prince Ohotsu, was given Larger Pure Second Rank, their brother Takechi, who had helped lead the forces in the Jinshin war, was given Broader Pure Second Rank, one lower than his younger brother.  Both Kawashima and Osakabe were given Larger Pure Third Rank.  So if the highest “Pure” rank was going to the Crown Prince, then who were the Myou ranks going to?  Unfortunately, thou the system would last until the development of the Taihou code, in 703, we don't have any clear examples of the Myou ranks being handed out, so that may be a puzzle we don't unravel. Beyond the ranks for the various princes, there was another, similar set of ranks for the common court nobles.  This system had 6 categories, broken up, like the Princely ranks, into four grades, each further divided into Larger and Broader, as before.  In this case the categories were: Shou – Upright Jiki – Straight Gon – Diligent Mu – Earnest Tsui – Pursue Shin – Advancement This created 48 total rank divisions, which gave an unprecedented granularity for the court.  As for granting rank, we have a couple of examples of that, beyond just the posthumous grants.  In 686, Ohoama conferred Gon-I, the Dilligent rank, on six ministers who attended to him, personally.  There was also a request that provincial governors should select nine people of achievement who could likely be given the same. There is one strange account:  in 685, Awata no Asomi no Mabito—Mabito, in this case, being his given name—requested permission to transfer his rank to his father, but this was refused. And I think this gets to the heart of the cultural change that was underway, and which Ohoama and the court was actively encouraging.  Although the kabane titles were a collective rank, court rank, and the accompanying stipend, was for the individual.  This wasn't something that could accrue to the head of a family.  That would have been an important point at a time when the traditions of the uji system were still quite strong. So there we have it.  Hopefully there was something new for you to take away as we come to better understand Ohoama and his court. We still have plenty more to discuss—probably enough for a few more episodes as we cover some of the natural events and disasters, the ties between the court and religion, as well as what was going on with peninsular affairs, not to mention the myriad other little random tidbits.  We'll get to all of that as we can. Next episode we'll take a look at the material culture of the court.  Specifically we'll take a look at what we know about their dress and clothing, much of which was influenced by that sumptuary laws that were, themselves, tied in closely with this new rank system. Until then, if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

It is the first year of a new reign, so come and let's take a look at how it all begins. For more, check out our blog page at: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-135 Rough Transcript   Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 135: Year One The officials of the Ministry of Kami Affairs bustled to and fro as they prepared the ritual grounds and the temporary buildings.  They were carefully erecting the structures, which would only be used for a single festival, and then torn down, but this would be an important festival.  It was the harvest festival, the Niiname-sai, the festival of the first-fruits.  Rice, from the regions of Tamba and Harima, specifically chosen through divination, would be offered to his majesty along with the kami who had blessed the land.  But this time, there was more. After all, this was the first harvest festival of a new reign, and they had orders to make it special.  The ascension ceremony had been held earlier in the year, but in some ways that was just a prelude.  There had been various rituals and ceremonies throughout the year emphasizing that this year was special—even foreign lands were sending envoys to congratulate him on the event.  But this wasn't for them.  This was the sovereign taking part, for the first time, in one of the most important ceremonies of the year.  After all, the feast of first-fruits was the culmination of all that the kami had done, and it emphasized the sovereign's role as both a descendant of heaven and as the preeminent intercessor with the divine spirits of the land. And so they knew, that everything had to be bigger, with even more pomp and circumstance than normal.  This wouldn't just be about the new rice.  This would be a grand ceremony, one that only happened once in a generation, and yet which would echo through the centuries.  As the annual harvest festival, it was an ancient tradition.  But as something new—as the Daijosai—it was something else all together. And it would have to be perfect!   Last episode we talked about the Kiyomihara palace and a little bit about what it was like in the court of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tennou.  After defeating the Afumi court supporting his nephew, Ohotomo, in 672, Ohoama had taken control of the government.  He moved back to Asuka, and into the refurbished Okamoto palace, building a southern exclave known to us today as the Ebinoko enclosure, which held one large building, which may have been a residence or a ceremonial structure—possibly the first “Daigokuden” or ceremonial hall. Ohoama's court built on the ideas that his brother, Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou, had put forth since the Taika era.  This was a continuation of the form of government known as the Ritsuryo system, or Ritsuryo-sei, literally a government of laws and punishments, and Ohoama had taken the reins.  He seems to have taken a much more direct approach to governance compared to some of his predecessors. For instance, the role of the ministerial families was reduced, with Ohoama or various princes—actual or invented relatives of the throne—taking a much more prominent role.  He also expanded access to the central government to those outside of the the Home Provinces.  After all, it was the traditional ministerial families—the Soga, the Nakatomi, and even the Kose—who had been part of the Afumi government that he had just defeated.  Meanwhile, much of his military support had come from the Eastern provinces, though with prominent indications of support from Kibi and Tsukushi as well. This episode we are going to get back to the events documented in the Chronicles, looking just at the first year of Ohoama's reign.  Well, technically it was the second year, with 672 being the first, but this is the first year in which he formally sat on the throne.  There's plenty going on in this year to fill a whole episode: it was the year of Ohoama's formal ascension, and there were numerous festivals, ceremonies, and other activities that seem to be directly related to a fresh, new start.  We will also look at the custom of handing out posthumous ranks, particularly to those who supported Ohoama during the Jinshin no Ran, and how that relates to the various ranks and titles used in Ohoama's court.  We have envoys from three different countries—Tamna, Silla, and Goguryeo—and their interactions with the Dazaifu in Tsukushi.  Finally, we have the first Daijosai, one of the most important ceremonies in any reign. And so, let's get into it.   The year 673 started with a banquet for various princes and ministers, and on the 27th day of the 2nd month, Ohoama formally assumed the throne at what would come to be known as Kiyomihara Palace.  Uno, his consort, who had traveled with him through the mountains from Yoshino to Ise, was made his queen, and their son, Royal Prince Kusakabe, was named Crown Prince.  Two days later they held a ceremony to convey cap-ranks on those deemed worthy. We are then told that on the 17th day of the following month, word came from the governor of Bingo, the far western side of ancient Kibi, today the eastern part of modern Hiroshima.  They had caught a white pheasant in Kameshi and sent it as tribute.  White or albino animals were seen as particularly auspicious signs, and no doubt it was taken as an omen of good fortune for the reign.  In response, the forced labor from Bingo, which households were required to supply to the State, was remitted.  There was also a general amnesty granted throughout the land. That same month we are also told that scribes were brought in to Kawaradera to copy the Issaiko—aka the Tripitaka, or the entirety of the Buddhist canon.  That would include hundreds of scrolls.  This clearly seems to be an act of Buddhist merit-making:  by copying out the scrolls you make merit, which translates to good karma.  That would be another auspicious start to the reign, and we see frequently that rulers would fund sutra copying—or sutra recitations—as well as temples, statues, bells and all other such things to earn Buddhist merit.  As the ruler, this merit didn't just accrue to you, but to the entire state, presumably bringing good fortune and helping to avert disaster. However, it wasn't just the Law of the Buddha that Ohoama was appealing to.  In the following entry, on the14th day of the 4th month, we are told that Princess Ohoki was preparing herself at the saigu, or abstinence palace, in Hatsuse—known as Hase, today, east of modern Sakurai, along the Yonabari river, on the road to Uda.  Ohoki was the sister of Prince Ohotsu.  Her mother was Ohota, the Queen's elder sister, making her a grandchild of Naka no Ohoye as well as the daughter of Ohoama.  Princess Ohoki's time at the abstinence palace was so that she could purify herself.  This was all to get her ready to head to Ise, to approach none other than the sun goddess, Amaterasu Ohokami. With all of these events, we see the full panoply of ritual and ceremony on display.  The formal, legal ceremonies of ascension and granting of rank.  The declaration of auspicious omens for the reign.   There is the making of Buddhist merit, but also the worship of the kami of the archipelago.  This is not an either-or situation.  We are seeing in the first half of this first year the fusion of all of these different elements into something that may not even be all that sensational to those of us, today.  After all, anyone who goes to Japan is likely well-accustomed to the way that both Buddhist and Shinto institutions can both play a large part in people's lives.  While some people may be more drawn to one than the other, for most they are complimentary. That isn't how it had to be.  For a time, it was possible that Buddhism would displace local kami worship altogether.  This was the core of the backlash that we saw from groups like the Nakatomi, whose role in kami-focused ceremonies was threatened by the new religion.  Indeed, for a while now it seems like mention of the kami has taken a backseat to Buddhist temples and ceremonies in the Chronicles.  Likewise, as a foreign religion, Buddhism could have also fallen out of favor.  It was not fore-ordained that it would come to have a permanent place on the archipelago.  This tension between local kami worship—later called Shinto, the Way of the Kami—and Buddhist teachings would vary throughout Japanese history, with one sometimes seen as more prestigious or more natural than the other, but neither one would fully eclipse the other. One could say that was in part due to the role that Amaterasu and kami worship played in the court ceremonies.  However, even there indigenous practices were not necessarily safe.  The court could have just as easily imported Confucian rituals, and replaced the spiritual connection between the sovereign and the kami with the continental style Mandate of Heaven. And thus, the choices that were being made at this time would have huge implications for the Japanese state for centuries to come. I should note that it is unlikely that this spontaneously arose amongst the upper class and the leadership.  I doubt this was just Ohoama's strategy to give himself multiple levers of power—though I'm not saying he wasn't thinking about that either.  But the only way that these levers existed was through their continued life in the culture and the people of the time.  If the people didn't believe in Buddhist merit, or that the kami influenced their lives, then neither would have given them much sway.  It was the fact that these were a part of the cultural imaginary of the state, and how people imagined themselves and their surroundings, that they were effective tools for Ohoama and his government. And so it seems that Ohoama's first year is off to a smashing success.  By the fifth month he is already issuing edicts—specifically on the structure of the state, which we discussed some last episode. But the high could not be maintained indefinitely.  And on the 29th day of the 5th month we have what we might consider our first negative entry, when Sakamoto no Takara no Omi passed away. You may remember Sakamoto, but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't.  He was the commander in the Nara Basin, under general Wofukei, who took 300 troops to Tatsuta.  From there he advanced to the Hiraishi plain and up to the top of Mt. Takayasu, to confront the Afumi forces that had taken the castle.  They fled, and Takara and his men overnighted at the castle.  The next day they tried to intercept Afumi troops advancing from the Kawachi plain, but they were forced to fall back to a defensive position.   We covered that in Episode 131 with the rest of the campaign in the Nara Basin. Takara's death is the first of many entries—I count roughly 21 through this and the following reign—which, for the most part, are all similarly worded.  Sakamoto no Takara no Omi, of Upper Daikin rank, died.  He was posthumously granted the rank of Shoushi for service in the Year of Mizu-no-e Saru, aka Jinshin.  We are told the individual, their rank at the time of their death, and then a note about a posthumous grant of rank.  Upper Daikin was already about the 7th rank from the top in the system of 664, and Shoushi would be the 6th rank, and one of the “ministerial” ranks.  This is out of 26, total.  “Kin” itself was the fourth of about 7 categories, and the last category that was split into six sub-ranks, with greater and lesser (Daikin and Shokin), each of which was further divided into Upper, Middle, and Lower ranks.  There's a lot to go into, in fact a little too much for this episode, so for more on the ranks in use at the start of the reign, check out our blogpost for this episode.        The giving of posthumous rank is mostly just an honorific.  After all, the individual is now deceased, so it isn't as if they would be drawing more of a stipend, though their new ranks may have influenced their funerary rites and similar things. As I said, on a quick scan of the text, I counted  21 of these entries, though there may be a few more with slightly different phrasing or circumstances.  Some of them were quite notable in the record, while others may have only had a mention here or there.  That they are mentioned, though, likely speaks to the importance of that connection to such a momentous year.  The Nihon Shoki is thought to have been started around the time of Ohoama or his successor, along with the Kojiki, and so it would have been important to people of the time to remind everyone that their ancestors had been the ones who helped with that momentous event.  It really isn't that much different from those who proudly trace their lineage back to heroes of, say, the American Revolution, though it likely held even more sway being closer to the actual events. After the death of Sakamoto no Takara, we get another death announcement.  This is of someone that Aston translates as “Satek Syomyeong” of Baekje, of Lower Daikin rank.  We aren't given much else about him, but we are told that Ohoama was shocked.  He granted Syomyeong the posthumous rank of “Outer Shoushi”, per Aston's translation.  He also posthumously named him as Prime Minister, or Desapyong, of Baekje. There are a few clues about who this might be, but very little to go on.  He is mentioned in 671, during the reign of Naka no Oe, when he received the rank of Upper Daikin along with Minister—or Sapyong—Yo Jasin.  It is also said in the interlinear text that he was the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Judgment—the Houkan no Taifu.  The Ministry of Judgment—the Houkan or perhaps the Nori no Tsukasa—is thought to have been the progenitor of the later Shikibu, the Ministry of Ceremony.  One of the major roles it played was in the selection of candidates for rank, position, and promotion. We are also told that in the year 660, in the reign of Takara Hime, one of the nobles captured in the Tang invasion of Baekje was “Desapyong Satek”, so perhaps this Syomyeong was a descendant or relative of the previous prime minister, who fled to Yamato with other refugees.  We also have another record from 671 of a Satek Sondeung and his companions accompanying the Tang envoy Guo Yacun.  So it would seem that the Sathek family was certainly notable The name “Satek” shows up once more, though Aston then translates it as “Sataku”, like a monk or scholar's name.  “Sataku” would be the Japanese on'yomi pronunciation of the same characters, so perhaps another relative. What we can take away from all of this is that the Baekje refugee community is still a thing in Yamato.  This Satek Seomyeong has court rank—Upper Daikin rank, just like Sakamoto, in the previous entry.  And we know that he had an official position at court—not just in the Baekje court in exile.  We'll see more on this as the community is further integrated into the rest of Society, such that there would no longer be a Baekje community, but families would continue to trace their lineages back to Baekje families, often with pride. The other odd thing here is the character “outer” or “outside” before “Shoushi”.  Aston translates it as part of the rank, and we see it show up a total of four times in some variation of “Outer Lesser X rank”.  Mostly it is as here, Outer Lesser Purple.  Later we would see a distinction of “outer” and “inner” ranks, which this may be a version of.  Depending on one's family lineage would denote whether one received an “outer” or “inner” rank, and so it may be that since Satek Syomyeong was from the Baekje community, it was more appropriate for him to have an “outside” rank. “Outer” rank would also be given to Murakuni no Muraji no Woyori, the general who had led the campaign to Afumi, taking the Seta bridge.  He was also posthumously given the rank of “Outer Shoushi” upon his death in 676.  Murakuni no Woyori is the only person of that surname mentioned around this time, so perhaps he wasn't from one of the “core” families of the Yamato court, despite the service he had rendered.  We also have at least one other noble of Baekje who is likewise granted an ”outer” rank. On the other side there are those like Ohomiwa no Makamuta no Kobito no Kimi, who was posthumously granted the rank of “Inner” Shoushi.  Here I would note that Ohomiwa certainly seems to suggest an origin in the Nara Basin, in the heartland of Yamato. The terms “Inner” and “Outer” are only used on occasion, however, and not consistently in all cases.  This could just be because of the records that the scribes were working off of at the time.  It is hard to say, exactly. All of these entries about posthumous ranks being granted tend to refer to cap ranks, those applying to members of various Uji, the clans that had been created to help organize the pre-Ritsuryo state. The Uji and their members played important roles in the court and the nation, both as ministers and lower functionaries.  But I also want to mention another important component of Ohoama's court, the members of the princely class, many of whom also actively contributed to the functioning of the state.  Among this class are those that Aston refers to as “Princes of the Blood”, or “Shinnou”.  These include the royal princes, sons of Ohoama who were in line for the throne, but also any of his brothers and sisters.  Then there were the “miko”, like Prince Kurikuma, who had been the Viceroy in Tsukushi, denying troops to the Afumi court.  Those princes claimed some lineal descent from a sovereign, but they were not directly related to the reigning sovereign.  In fact, it isn't clear, today, if they were even indirectly related to the reigning sovereign, other than through the fact that the elites of the archipelago had likely been forming marriage alliances with one another for centuries, so who knows.  And maybe they made their claims back to a heavenly descendant, like Nigi Hayahi.  Either way, they were the ones with claims—legitimate or otherwise—to royal blood.  Notably, the Princes did not belong to any of the Uji, , and they didn't have kabane, either—no “Omi”, “Muraji”, “Atahe”, et cetera. They did, at least from this reign forward, have rank.  But it was separate and different from the rank of the Uji members.  Members of the various Uji were referred to with cap rank, but the Princely ranks were just numbered—in the Nihon Shoki we see mention of princes of the 2nd through 5th ranks—though presumably there was also a “first” rank.  It is not entirely clear when this princely rank system was put into place, but it was probably as they were moving all of the land, and thus the taxes, to the state.  Therefore the court would have needed to know what kind of stipend each prince was to receive—a stipend based on their rank.  These ranks, as with later numbered ranks, appear to have been given in ascending order, like medals in a tournament:  first rank, second rank, third rank, etc. with fifth rank being the lowest of the Princely ranks. Many of these Princes also held formal positions in the government.  We saw this in Naka no Oe's reign with Prince Kurikuma taking the Viceroy-ship of Tsukushi, but during Ohoama's reign we see it even more. Beneath the Princes were the various Ministers and Public Functionaries—the Officers of the court, from the lowest page to the highest minister.  They were members of the elite noble families, for the most part, or else they claimed descent from the elite families of the continent.  Either way they were part of what we would no doubt call the Nobility.  Their cap-rank system, mentioned earlier, was separate from that used by the Princes. And, then at the bottom, supporting this structure, were the common people.  Like the princes, they did not necessarily have a surname, and they didn't really figure into the formal rank system.  They certainly weren't considered members of the titled class, and often don't even show up in the record.  And yet we should not forget that they were no doubt the most numerous and diverse group for the majority of Japanese history.  Our sources, however, have a much more narrow focus. There is one more class of people to mention here, and that is the evolving priestly class.  Those who took Buddhist orders and became Buddhist monks were technically placed outside of the social system, though that did not entirely negate their connections to the outside world.  We see, for example, how Ohoama, even in taking orders, still had servants and others to wait on him.  However, they were at least theoretically outside of the social hierarchy, and could achieve standing within the Buddhist community through their studies of Buddhist scripture.  They had their own hierarchy, which was tied in to the State through particular Buddhist officers appointed by the government, but otherwise the various temples seem to have been largely in charge of their own affairs. But anyway, let's get back to the Chronicles. Following closely on the heels of Satek Syomyeong's passing, two days later, we have another entry, this one much more neutral.  We are told that Tamna, aka the kingdom on Jeju island off the southern tip of the Korean peninsula, sent Princes Kumaye, Tora, Uma, and others with tribute. So now we are getting back into the diplomatic swing of things.  There had been one previous embassy—that of Gim Apsil of Silla, who had arrived just towards the end of the Jinshin War, but they were merely entertained in Tsukushi and sent back, probably because Ohoama's court were still cleaning house. Tamna, Silla, and Goguryeo—usually accompanied by Silla escorts—would be the main visitors to Yamato for a time.  At this point, Silla was busy trying to get the Tang forces to leave the peninsula.  This was partly assisted by the various uprisings in the captured territories of Goguryeo and Baekje—primarily up in Goguryeo.  There were various attempts to restore the kingdom.  It isn't clear, but I suspect that the Goguryeo envoys we do eventually see were operating largely as a vassal state under Silla. Tamna, on the other hand, seems to have been outside of the conflict, from what we see in the records, and it likely was out of the way of the majority of any fighting.  They also seem to have had a different relationship with Yamato, based on some of the interactions. It is very curious to me that the names of the people from Tamna seem like they could come from Yamato.  Perhaps that is related in some way to theories that Tamna was one of the last hold-outs of continental proto-Japonic language prior to the ancestor of modern Korean gaining ascendancy.  Or it could just be an accident of how things got copied down in Sinitic characters and then translated back out. The Tamna mission arrived on the 8th day of the 6th intercalary month of 673.  A Silla embassy arrived 7 days later, but rather than tribute, their mission was twofold—two ambassadors to offer congratulations to Ohoama and two to offer condolences on the late sovereign—though whether that means Naka no Oe or Ohotomo is not exactly clear.  All of these arrived and would have been hosted, initially, in Tsukushi, probably at modern Fukuoka.  The Silla envoys were accompanied by Escorts, who were briefly entertained and offered presents by the Dazaifu, the Yamato government extension on Kyushu, and then sent home.  From then on, the envoys would be at the mercy of Yamato and their ships. About a month and a half later, on the 20th day of the 8th month, Goguryeo envoys also showed up with tribute, accompanied by Silla escorts.  Five days later, word arrived back from the court in Asuka.  The Silla envoys who had come to offer congratulations to the sovereign on his ascension were to be sent onwards.  Those who had just come with tribute, however, could leave it with the viceroy in Tsukushi.    They specifically made this point to the Tamna envoys, whom they then suggested should head back soon, as the weather was about to turn, and they wouldn't want to be stuck there when the monsoon season came. The Tamna cohort weren't just kicked out, however.  The court did grant them and their king cap-rank.  The envoys were given Upper Dai-otsu, which Yamato equated to the rank of a minister in Tamna. The Silla envoys—about 27 in total—made their way to Naniwa.  It took them a month, and they arrived in Naniwa on the 28th day of the 9th month.  Their arrival was met with entertainments—musical performances and presents that were given to the envoys.  This was all part of the standard diplomatic song and dance—quite literally, in this case. We aren't given details on everything.  Presumably the envoys offered their congratulations, which likely included some presents from Silla, as well as a congratulatory message.  We aren't given exact details, but a little more than a month later, on the first day of the 11th month, envoy Gim Seungwon took his leave. Meanwhile, the Goguryeo envoys, who, like Tamna, had arrived merely with tribute, were still in Tsukushi.  On the 21st day of the 11th month, just over two months after they arrived, we are told that they were entertained at the Ohogohori in Tsukushi and were given presents based on their rank. The Ohogohori, or “Big District”, appears to mirror a similar area in Naniwa that was likewise known for hosting diplomatic envoys. With the diplomatic niceties over, there was one more thing to do in this first year of the new reign: the thanksgiving ritual always held at the beginning of a new reign, the Daijosai, or oho-namematsuri.  This is a harvest ritual where the newly enthroned sovereign offers new rice to the kami and then eats some himself.  At least in the modern version, he gives thanks and prays to Amaterasu Ohomikami, as well as to the amatsu-kami and kunitsu-kami, the kami of heaven and earth. The Daijosai shares a lot in common with another important annual festival, the Niinamesai, or the Feast of First Fruits.  This is the traditional harvest festival, usually held in November.  The Daijosai follows much the same form as the Niinamesai, and as such, in years where there is a new sovereign, and thus the Daijosai is held, the Niinamesai is not, since it would be duplicative. Many of the rituals of the Daijosai are private affairs and not open to the public. There are various theories about what happens, but only those who are part of the ritual know for sure, and they are sworn to secrecy. The first instance of the Daijosai in the Chronicles is during the reign of Shiraga Takehiko Kunioshi Waka Yamato Neko, aka Seinei Tennou, in the 5th century, but we should take that with a huge grain of salt.  Remember, one of the purposes behind the chronicles was to explain how everything came to be, and saying “we just made it up” wasn't really going to fly. I've seen some sources suggest that the Daijosai can be attributed to the first reign of Ohoama's mother, Takara Hime, aka Kougyoku Tennou.  The term used in her reign, though is Niiname, which seems to refer to the annual Niinamesai, though she is the first in the Chronicles that seems to celebrate it in the first year of her reign, sharing with the Crown Prince and Ministers. It is likely that the ritual is much older in origin.  After all, giving the first fruits of the harvest to the kami to thank them for their assistance seems like the core of harvest festivals around the world.  We see it mentioned as the Niinamesai in much of the rest of the Nihon Shoki, even back to the Age of the Gods, when it played an important part in the stories of Amaterasu and Susanowo.  It is in Ohoama's reign, though, that it seems to first take on its character as a true ritual of the state.  We see that the Nakatomi and the Imbe were involved.  Together these two families oversaw much of the court ritual having to do with kami worship.  We also know that the officials of the Jingikan, the Ministry of Kami Affairs, were also present, as they were all given presents for attending on the sovereign during the festival.  We also see that the district governors of Harima and Tamba, which were both in the area of modern Hyougo Prefecture, as well as various laborers under them, were all recognized with presents as well.  We can assume that this was because they provided the rice and other offerings used in the festival.  In addition to the presents they received, the two governors were each given an extra grade of cap-rank. Another Daijosai would be carried out in the first year of Ohoama's successor, and from there on it seems to have become one of if not *the* major festival of a reign.  It marks, in many ways, the end of the first year of ceremonies for the first year of a reign.  And even in other years, the Niinamesai is often one of the pre-eminent festivals. The Daijosai may have been the climax of the year in many ways, but the year was not quite done yet.  We have two more entries, and both are related to Buddhism.  First, on the 17th day of the 12th month, just twelve days after the Daijosai, Prince Mino and Ki no Omi no Katamaro were appointed Commissioners for the erection of the Great Temple of Takechi—aka the Ohomiya no Ohodera, also known as the Daikandaiji. The Daikandaiji was a massive temple complex.  It is thought that it was originally a relocation of Kudara Ohodera, and we have remains at the foot of Kaguyama—Mt. Kagu, in the Asuka region of modern Kashihara city.  Many of the ruins, however, seem to date to a slightly later period, suggesting that the main temple buildings were rebuilt after Ohoama's reign.  Still, it is quite likely that he had people start the initial work. In setting up the temple, of course it needed a head priest.  And so Ohoama called upon a priest named Fukurin and made him an offer he couldn't refuse… literally.  Fukurin tried to object to being posted as the head priest.  He said that he was too old to be in charge of the temple.  Ohoama wasn't having any of it.  He had made up his mind, and Fukurin was in no position to refuse him. A quick note on the two commissioners here.  First off, I would note that Prince Mino here isn't mentioned as having Princely rank.  Instead, he is mentioned with the ministerial rank of Shoushi.  Ki no Katamaro, on the other hand, is Lower Shoukin, several grades below.  Once again, a bit of confusion in the ranks, as it were. The final entry for the year 673 occurred 10 days after the erection of the great temple, and it was a fairly straightforward entry:  The Buddhist Priest, Gijou, was made Shou-soudzu, or Junior Soudzu.  Junior Soudzu was one of the government appointed positions of priests charged with overseeing the activities of the priests and temples and holding them to account as necessary.  Originally there was the Soujou and the Soudzu, but they were later broken up into several different positions, likely due to the proliferation of Buddhism throughout the archipelago. There doesn't seem to be much on Gijou before this point, but we know that he would go on to live a pretty full life, passing away over thirty years later, in 706 CE. He would outlive Ohoama and his successor.  And with that, we come to the end of the first year.  I am not planning to go year by year through this entire reign—in fact, we have already touched on a lot of the various recurring entries.  But I do think that it is worth it to see how the Chronicles treat this first year for a reign that would have been considered pretty momentous to the people of the time. Next episode we'll continue going through the reign of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tennou.  There is a lot going on, which, as I've said, will influence the nation for centuries—even up until the modern day. Until then, if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

Ōama, aka Temmu Tennō, ascended the throne in the Kiyomihara Palace--a rennovated version of his mother's Later Okamoto Palace.  Here he ruled with a tremendous amount of authority, continuing the leverage the Ritsuryo system to centralize power in the throne.  We'll look at the layout of the palace, and also talk a little bit about what life was like for the members of the court who were serving Oama, and the state at large. For photos, diagrams, and more, see our blog at: https://sengokudaimyo.com/episode-134 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 134: An Image of the Court at Kiyomihara Maro sat under the eaves of the hall to which he was assigned.  The journey from Mino hadn't been so hard, but he was still far from his family, back home.  He knew as much as they did that serving at the court of the Great Lord was a tremendous opportunity.  He would be at the heart of the court, in the presence of those running the country, and he could learn a lot from them.  After passing his internship, he would have a chance to prove himself.  If he worked hard, he could look forward to continued promotion, with the greater stipend and influence that came with it. Maro had no illusions that he would someday be at the top of the court hierarchy, but perhaps he could make some modest improvements in his station.  His elder brother was expected to inherit their father's position back in Mino, but the court provided a different opportunity.  Maro had always been a quick learner, and had learned to read and write at an early age, devouring whatever knowledge he could get his hands on – and that had helped make him that much more desirable to the court.  Now he was learning the ins and outs of how it worked, mostly by doing odd jobs while observing the various interactions, the politics, and the rhythm of it all.  Life at the Court really was something.  And yet he still felt homesick.  And so here Maro sat, looking out at the full moon in the sky, its light so bright that he barely needed any other illumination.  Maro wondered at the idea that his family might be looking up at the same moon at the very same time.  As that image took hold, he could feel in the experience a poetic verse.  He took out one of the wooden slips used for labels and notes, scraped off the previous writing, and began jotting down his composition. He only got through a couple of lines before he heard his name being called, and since he was on night duty he put down the brush and the wooden slip.  Poetry would have to wait.  With everything put back away, he rushed off to find out what new task awaited him. So here we are, the year is 673 and we are at the start of a new era.  Ohoama, aka Temmu Tennou, had defeated his enemies and was now in the process of taking the reins of power and officially ascending the throne.  In so doing he was moving the capital from Ohotsu, on the shores of Lake Biwa, back to Asuka.  Arriving back, he took up residence in what is called the Shima palace for a few days, presumably as they prepared the Okamoto Palace for him.  At the same time, we are told that a “palace” was erected for Ohoama south of the Okamoto Palace, and this was called the Kiyomihara Palace. I'd like to spend this episode talking about this Kiyomihara Palace, and what life was like there, not just for Ohoama but for his new court.  While we talked about some of the other palaces, this is perhaps one of the better known from the archaeological record, and it is the backdrop for so much that happens.  Ohoama is even known as the Sovereign from Kiyomihara.  So let's talk about what the palace consisted of, and what it was, and a little bit about what life was like there.  In addition to that, we've discussed in previous episodes how Ohoama's ascension to the throne kicked off a whole new era in the evolution of the Yamato state, with numerous innovations and new paradigms in the idea of the ruler and the court and their relationship – so it's worth taking a closer look at the setting where all of that was happening, so we can try and put ourselves in the shoes of those doing the work, and understand their daily grind, as it were. There is unfortunately plenty about the Kiyomihara Palace that we don't know - it isn't like there is a detailed account of the palace in the records - but its ruins are probably the most complete of all those found in Asuka.  This makes sense, given that it would have been built over the earlier palace sites.  In fact, for the most part, the Kiyomihara Palace is just the Later Okamoto Palace, in other words where Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tennou, ruled, but updated and expanded to fit Ohoama's and his court's needs.  Archeological work in Asuka has done some tremendous work to help us understand the Asuka Palace Site.  By studying the various post holes, ditches, and other evidence, along with occasionally discarded items, we have a general idea of the palace's shape, and when we combine this with what we know from other sites—the Naniwa Palace ruins in Ohosaka, the Fujiwara palace ruins in Kashihara, and the Heijo-kyo ruins in Nara, among others—along with an understanding of how palaces were being built on the continent, we are able to piece together what we think was going on.  Of course these interpretations aren't unanimous, and there are parts that scholars will no doubt quibble over—such as the use of the Ebinoko compound, which I'll talk about in a bit—but in general we have a picture of what things probably looked like, at least from a layout perspective, and how the site may have been used. To start, let's go back for a moment to the Toyosaki Palace in Naniwa, the first palace purpose built for the new governmental system being brought over from the continent.  This was the palace of Karu Ohokimi, aka Koutoku Tennou, uncle to Naka no Ohoye.  It was built in the aftermath of the Isshin Incident of 645, an architectural centerpiece of the Taika reforms.  As you may recall, this was a massive undertaking.  This palace was largely rectangular, and consisted of three compounds from south to north, ranging from most to least public. Most people would enter from the south gate, later known as the Suzaku-mon, the gate of the crimson bird of the south, a pattern that would generally hold true for other palaces.  Entering the compound, you would find yourself in the Choshuden, a space holding two pavilions with several rooms where officials could change into or out of their official robes.  The gates to the Choshuden would open at sunrise for the clerks and functionaries would enter.  At the northern end of the Choshuden was the Southern gate of the Chodoin, the main working area of the court.  There were 14 halls, or Chodo, each one dedicated to a different ministry.  The size of these halls varied, likely based on importance or at least the size of their government portfolio. Most of the middle area of the Chodoin was open, but at the northern end was the gate to the Dairi, the inner palace.  This gate was flanked by two octagonal buildings, and it led to an area between the Chodoin and the Dairi where there sat the building that would become the Daigokuden.  This was the main audience chamber for meetings with the sovereign, who would preside and make pronouncements in the early morning hours, at the start of the day. To the north of the Daigokuden was the rest of the Dairi, where the sovereign's personal quarters lay, including the quarters for his consorts and children, maintained by his personal servants.And there were other gates into and out of the Dairi—after all, the palace was so large you didn't want to have to go through the Choushuden and Choudouin just to get to the sovereign's quarters.  Those who lived in the Dairi and those who worked there would be able to have their own entrances and exits. Let's contrast all of this with the Okamoto Palace in Asuka.  More precisely the Later Okamoto Palace.  This was the successor palace to the Itabuki palace, both of which were built for Takara Hime, aka Kougyouku—and by this point Saimei—Tennou.  In fact, Itabuki palace burned down at the end of 654, just as Takara Hime came to the throne a second time.  This palace was, in total, maybe the size of the Chodoin of the Toyosaki Palace, if that.  For one thing, there wasn't as much flat land easily available in the valley, but for another, the builders maybe didn't think they needed quite that much space and that many buildings.  You see, while the Toyosaki palace in Naniwa was likely meant to model the kind of infrastructure necessary for the Tang court, in Chang'an, Yamato was still building up its fledgling bureaucracy.  It wasn't like there were a flood of reports and correspondences coming in from all over the archipelago that had to be handled by an army of clerks.  At least not yet. The Okamoto palace, from what we can tell, was also a rectangle, once again facing south , on the east side of the Asuka river.  This palace did not necessarily have the same kinds of dedicated spaces as the Toyosaki Palace. The main gate that we know of was in the south, leading to a courtyard with another building—possibly the Ohoandono, alternatively the Ohoyasumidono or the Daianden.  This may have been an audience hall for meeting with public officials.  The ground here was covered in gravel, a fairly common thing for palace compounds. Though we don't know exactly what the buildings looked like, we have some idea based on the size and number of post-holes.  We also haven't found any ceramic tiles in or around the ruins so far, which suggests that Okamoto Palace did not have ceramic tile roofs as were common on temple architecture, but instead were likely covered with wooden shingles, like the Itabuki Palace that used to be in relatively the same spot.  From an archeological perspective, any tiled building of this size leaves a lot of indications behind: over the years tiles fall off, break, get buried, etc.  Even if, as was common, the court meticulously dismantled the buildings down and reused as much as they could, we would still expect to see some tiles or tile fragments in the ground where the pillars are found, and yet we find nothing of the sort.  To the east and west of the Ohoandono were long, narrow structures, oriented north to south rather than east to west.  These are thought to have been the offices where government officials could do their work. Moving into the northern section of the palace, the ground was paved with river stones.  There were two large buildings with small wings, running east to west, lengthwise, and situated on the same line as the Ohoandono.  These may have been what have been called the To no Andono, or outer Hall, and the Uchi no Andono, the inner hall, and they would have been used for ceremonies for those of the appropriate rank. The middle hall it seems was modified from its original form.  While it was similar in size and footprint to the hall north of it, the western wing of the southern hall at some point was destroyed—whether on purpose or accidentally—and it was replaced with what appears to have been a pond. On each side of this central area we see more space for buildings, but only some of the post holes have so far been uncovered.  There were other buildings further in the northernmost third of the compound that were likely for the sovereign's private usage, as well as a well, and what may have been a building for some kind of semi-private religious ceremony. This palace, the Okamoto Palace, was essentially what Ohoama started from when he  relocated the capital back to Asuka – but when he ascended to the throne, he did make a few changes.  Most notable was the creation of something called the ebinoko-kuruwa, the Ebinoko enclosure.  This was to the southeast of the main palace, and had a rectangular wall surrounding one large building and two smaller ones.  Interestingly, the buildings would appear to be oriented in a symmetrical shape that would suggest a southern entrance, like the other palace compounds we've been discussing, and yet the gate was to the west, opening to the area between the Ebinoko enclosure and the main palace.  And based on postholes and other evidence, there appear to have been at least four other rectangular buildings stretching out to the south, outside of the walls.  Some have theorized that the large building in the Ebinoko  was an early form of the Daigokuden, a ceremonial hall where Ohoama held court, rather than reusing the facilities of the old Okamoto palace.  Alternately,  perhaps it was actually more like the buildings of the Chodoin in Naniwa, where the different departments of the court actually did business, but here with all of the officials working in one, single building.  A third idea that others have suggested that this was actually Ohoama's private residence—again, somewhat odd given the size and shape and the fact that there were the seemingly larger facilities of the Okamoto palace already right there for the taking. So which is it?  We do have a clue in the record of the 15th day of the 9th month of 672, and the lines following it.  According to the Aston translation of the Nihon shoki: He removed his residence from the Palace of Shima to the Palace of Okamoto. In this year a Palace was erected south of the Palace of Okamoto, and the Emperor removed his residence thither that same winter.  This was called the Palace of Kiyomibara in Asuka. So it does seem like something was built south of Okamoto and that is where Ohoama resided.  It is somewhat uncommon for a sovereign to reuse an old palace like this.  Traditionally, sovereigns had regularly moved to new palaces, seemingly because of the attempts to avoid ritual pollution associated with death.  Of course, it had been a while since Takara hime had passed away, and Naka no Ohoye had moved everything to Ohotsu, but nonetheless, is it possible that the Ebinoko kuruwa was built to, in some way, give Ohoama new quarters? We may never know for sure.  There are plenty of inconsistencies.  For one, if it was meant as a residence, I would expect more buildings for his consorts and others.  There are also some things to note about the account in the Nihon Shoki.  For one thing, although the initial account calls this the Kiyomihara Palace,  the Chronicles also suggest that it wouldn't actually get that name until the 20th day of the 7th month of 686, about 14 years later. That record describes how a new era name was also announced:  the Akamitori, or red bird, era.  I don't want to get too much into it right now, but suffice it to say that a red, three legged crow is often depicted as the symbol of the sun; and the important south gate of the palace, the Suzaku-mon, is named for the vermillion bird of the south, one of the four guardian animals.  When this era name—more commonly read as “Shucho”, today, since era names are commonly red in on'yomi reading rather than kun'yomi—well, when it was declared, we are told that the palace was titled the Palace of Kiyomihara of Asuka. What are we to make of this? Well, today, it is assumed that the Kiyomihara palace refers to the Okamoto Palace starting from the creation of the Ebinoko-kuruwa and its occupation during what is assumed to be Ohoama's rule.  Earlier in the Nihon Shoki we are told that Ohoama was known as the Kiyomihara sovereign, and so even though that name technically wasn't applied to the palace until later, it makes some sense just to assume it applied from the start of Ohoama's renovations. One more thing that I would point out.  While we talked about the original Okamoto Palace and the newly built Ebinoko enclosure, they were arranged as though around a large open area, like a courtyard.  The original palace stood at the north, where one could enter the south gate of the palace, and then the Ebinoko enclosure sat on the east side of the courtyard, with its western gate between the two.  The southern and western sides of the courtyard, on the other hand, followed the snaking flow of the Asuka River. From about 675 to 681, on or about the 17th day of the first month of the year, it's recorded that the court held an annual archery shoot in the court of either the West or South Gate—which would seem to refer to this large area.  This makes sense, as the space is large enough to accommodate plenty of room for the range and for others to watch The archery exhibition   was held here, in the space between the two compounds, like clockwork until 681, when we are just told that it was held in the “Courtyard”, which feels like it is referring to an area inside the main compound of Kiyomihara. There are no more mentions of the tradition after 681, though there is an archery shoot in front of the South Gate on the 5th day of the 5th month of 685, but that was probably done as part of the regular 5/5 celebrations—a holiday today known as Kodomo no Hi, or Children's Day, but more traditionally known as Tango no Sekku, the Iris festival.  Some form of celebration on this date seems to have occurred throughout East Asia up until the modern day. Whether the archery stopped or just became such a standard thing that it was no longer noteworthy in the record, I can't really say.  However, one can possibly imagine what it was like, with all of the courtiers out there watching as the arrows shot down the field.  The occasional twang of bows and the faint whistle as it sped towards its target, hitting the target with a sharp thwack.  Murmurs from the crowd regarding how well—or how poorly—any given person was doing. Beyond the courtyard and what we know of the two compounds—the Kiyomihara palace and the Ebinoko Enclosure—there is plenty still to discover.  There were likely other compounds around the palace, possibly as an extension of the palace.  And then there were the temples: west, across the river, was Kawaradera, and north of the palace and surrounding compounds was Houkouji, or Asukadera.  There is even some evidence on the northwest edge of the compounds, southwest from Asukadera, of an ancient garden surrounding several manmade ponds. And so, the entire valley appears to have been filled with buildings and official spaces , running up against and being constrained by the natural features of the valley itself.  As I mentioned above, there just isn't that much buildable space in the Asuka valley, compared to other places like Naniwa.  And this contributed to one of the other problems that the court would have experienced: according to tradition,  the front of the palace and other buildings were all oriented south, but for this location, this meant that they didn't face the expansive fields of the Nara basin, but instead they faced the mountains themselves.  All in all, there was not much room here to grow, and yet the government and the court had grown, at least by all accounts. Though, how much had the court grown? Maybe not as much as we might expect, despite Ohoama's ambitions.  First of all there had been the purge of the powerful ministers at the head of the Afumi court, but there are some startling omissions in the records from the beginning of Ohoama's reign.  There is no mention of the Daijin, or Great Minister.  There is no Minister of the Right or Minister of the Left.  There is no Inner Minister, and there is no Great Minister of State.  There are mentions of the “kugyou”, or “Ministers of State”, which traditionally includes the Daijin, but there is no mention of the Daijin, suggesting that the “kugyou” of this time may have only referenced the heads of the 8 ministries of the Dajokan, the Council of State.  What does this mean? Many scholars interpret this period as a time of extremely centralized power.  Coming off of his military victory, Ohoama seems to have ridden a wave of support and control.  Combine that with the continued absorption of Tang dynasty propaganda-slash-government theory that saw the sovereign—the emperor—as the central authority, and one can see how Ohoama may have been able to do something that few sovereigns in Japanese history were able to actually do, which is to wield real power.  This may seem odd for a position translated into English most commonly as  “Emperor,” but as we've seen, in glimpses through the way they are depicted in the Chronicles, or through the archaeological record, which shows different loci of power and authority across the archipelago in ancient times, the Ohokimi, later dubbed the Tennou or Sumera no Mikoto, was not necessarily all powerful.  Not only did they have to contend with rivals to the throne, but even various court nobles who made their way into the centers of power.  From figures like Takeuchi no Sukune, to the Ohotomo, the Mononobe, and more recently the Soga—in all of these cases various nobles often held considerable power, though often in tension with one another. Sources of authority also varied.  There were the individual religious centers through which families exercised some ritual authority, while there was also more secular authority in the various court positions.  The Ohokimi certainly were respected, from what we can tell, and had a powerful source of authority going back to at least the holy kami of Mt. Miwa.  They even spread that authority through their kannushi, their priests, which they sent out as an extension of the state.  But they weren't entirely independent, either. But Ohoama seems to have reached a point where he did hold a tremendous amount of authority.  Because there is another telling omission from the chronciles: we don't see any more Soga members.  With the death of Soga no Akaye, the Soga family's influence seems to have disappeared this reign.  We also don't see that much about other prominent families compared to earlier: we see the Mononobe as ambassadors, and we see the Nakatomi are still conducting rituals.  But we don't see any of them rising to the same positions as their forebears.  Instead, we see a lot of focus on the Princely class—those members who claim some descent from a previous sovereign, or even the current sovereign, and how they, themselves, are divided up with their own system of ranks that are outside the civil service ranking system. Speaking of civil service, it does always strike me that the ranking systems of various east Asian courts very much resemble the way that, even today, many modern bureaucracies create wage scales for their civil servants.  In the US the most common such scale is the GS or “General Schedule” pay system.  In that system, positions are associated with a particular grade, between 1 and 15, and federal employees are also referred to in terms of those grades.  Grade typically reflects some level of seniority and pay.  It isn't a one-for-one analogy, of course: the court ranks in Yamato were handed out by the sovereign, or at least through their authority, as were the various court positions, though I doubt that Ohoama was spending much personal time approving promotions for a low level clerk writing down inventories and suchlike—but who knows.  But it does emphasize that this system is built to be a centralized bureaucratic monarchy, based on the continental model, and it now seems to have come into its own.  The court seems to have bought into the idea, and now, intentionally or not, much of their own position in society was directly tied to the autocratic whims of the monarch, or Ohoama himself. Indeed, some of the first records from the year 673 are focused on the court and court system.  The very first thing this entailed:  a banquet on the 7th day of the first month of the new year.  We are told that it was a “drinking party” or “shuen”, and boy does that draw some parallels with modern Japanese companies.  We aren't exactly given the form of this party, but we do have later examples.  There was likely a formal start, with various nobles set out at assigned seats based on their rank.  It was an official event, so officials would have been expected to wear the appropriate clothing, including their caps of rank, letting everyone know exactly who's who, and reinforcing the social hierarchy imposed by the rank system in the first place.  I suspect that it started with ritual and formality.  Later, you would have the after party, where people might more freely mingle and drink and recite poetry.  This was both an official and social occasion, because there really wasn't much of a line drawn between the two.  As a ritual, it displayed Ohoama's power over the state through his ability to host them all.  As a social function it was an important time in the political life of the court, where everyone was together, and you could find your cliques and supporters. Drinking alcohol, while being something that many enjoy for its own sake, was also a kind of religious observance.  Sake was made to be offered to the kami, as well as to be used at parties.  It was made from rice, the staple on which the agricultural success of the archipelago was based, and which held a particularly sacred place in other rituals and ceremonies. And then there was the poetry.  As would be true for much of Japanese history, poetry infused all aspects of life at the court, and being able to compose good poetry was just as important to one's social standing as reading, writing, and other such skills. There were generally two kinds of poetry practiced at the court.  There was the traditional Japanese poetry, or waka, with alternating verses of 5 or 7 syllables—more properly morae, but no need to get into that.  Then there was poetry composed in the Sinitic style.  Known as “Kanshi”, which translates directly as “Han Poetry”, this mimics the poetic forms brought over in literature from the continent.  It required a certain amount of education to be able to compose and was based on the characters, or kanji, used.  Kanshi can generally be divided into at least two categories.  There is the Kotaishi, or the Old Style Poetry, which consists of poetic form used prior to the Tang dynasty.  Then there is Kintaishi, or Modern Style Poetry, which is based on the forms from the Tang dynasty and later.  Kintaishi is usually recognized for adhering to more rules of structure and composition, usually using lines of 5 or 7 characters, while Kotaishi is more fluid and less concerned with specific rules and rhythms. Poetry was also not necessarily a solo activity.  It was common in later eras to arrange poetry competition, where the court would divide itself, much like the bureaucracy, between the Left and the Right.  Each group would compose poetry, often on a set theme, and then  put up the poems they felt were the best against those of the other side and then the entire court would listen and judge.  The only tangible reward, assuming the sovereign was not so moved as to do something extraordinary, was bragging rights.  And yet, that social capital was important among the nobles of the court.  Image was extremely important to individuals, and embarrassment could be a political death sentence.  And so many would work hard at these poems to make sure that they were the best they could be. At this point, though, we are still in the early years of many of these traditions.  The poetry that we have appears to be less formulaic than we see in later eras, when there were so many precedents to which one was expected to adhere.  Poems could be about feeling and were not required to hearken back to previous poems and poetic allusions. By the way, official events like this are also one of the ways that we get compilations of poems, later on.  These events would get transcribed and then later those poems would be referenced, particularly if they were noteworthy or by noteworthy individuals.  This kind of event may have been where a lot of the poems from works like the Man'yoshu and the Kaifusou, the earliest compilations of Waka and Kanshi, respectively.  At some point I”d love to dig into the poetry more in depth, but for the moment, I think it is best to leave it there. Now besides one's skills at poetry there were other skills that the court was interested in.  The court system that they had lifted from the continent was based, at least theoretically, on the idea of a meritocracy.  The monarch, of course, was judged to be worthy to rule through the mandate of Heaven, which often demonstrated itself early in the regime through the Emperor's forces defeating their enemies, much as Ohoama had defeated his rivals in the Afumi court.  However, for the rest of the government, the sovereign needed to make sure that he had qualified individuals.  From an early point in history, people recognized that not everyone born into power and wealth was necessarily the best person to help run things.  If you could only find those of the greatest intellect, discernment, and moral compass, then those are the ones you would want to have running things, right?  And this is fine in theory. However, determining who has those qualifications can be a bit tricky.  We talked about this back in episodes 71 and 72 when we talked about the Han dynasty more generally.  In that case, while the civil service exam was open to any person, the reality was that only those with enough wealth and leisure time could afford to study to take the test.  And so while it did open up opportunities for some, it did not truly apply equally across all classes of people.  And this was likely fine with most of the ruling class at the time, since there were also still theories that there were different classes of people, and it simply reinforced their ideas that those in the lower classes just didn't have the same capabilities that they had.  In the Yamato court early in Ohoama's reign it isn't clear to me exactly how individuals were being chosen for service.  We know that rank was handed out as a reward for service, varying with the individual.  Ohoama handed out rank at the end of 672 to those who had helped him to come to power, and then, on the 29th day of the 2nd month of 673, just two days after he formally ascended the throne, we are told that he conferred cap-rank on those who had performed good service, each according to their situation. Of course, that is about how promotions were rewarded.  But what about how people entered into service in the first place?  How did you get introduced to a job in the bureaucracy in the first place?  Well for that we have Ohoama's pronouncement on the first day of the fifth month.  He addressed the court and set it up as follows: First, anyone who would take a government position would begin their career as an “ohotoneri”.  These were low level functionaries who supported the various bureaus as guards, messengers, and whatever else was needed.  Previously, this all would have fallen under the general term of “toneri”, who were those members of the nobility who had been sent to serve in the royal palace.  Aston translates this as a “chamberlain”, and thus equates oho-toneri—literally “great toneri”—as “high chamberlain”, though I'm not sure if that was actually the distinction or not.  It looks like the term “toneri” itself may pre-date the Ritsuryo system, but now was being more standardized, with expanded categories of “toneri” within the system itself.  Interestingly, there is only one other example I could find of Ohotoneri before the reign of Ohoama and that was in the account of Waketakeru no Ohokimi, aka Yuryaku Tennou, which makes me think that might be an anachronism.  We definitely see “toneri” used since just before that reign and continuously onward, and we see them in regards to not just the royal house, but as the functionaries and servants in various places and for other aristocratic families, but the “ohotoneri” seem to have been specifically connected to the royal family… and thus the state. Ohotoneri, despite being quote-unquote “great” toneri, were at the relative bottom of the hierarchy.  They were the night shift, the guards, the messengers, and the general go-fers.  They were essentially paid interns.  As they did their tasks, they were learning about how the various offices and ministries worked, and they were demonstrating their own aptitude.  Based on how they did, they would then be assigned to various offices as seemed most suitable. There were also offices that were staffed by women.  Though separate and distinct, women also had a role in the palace and thus the maintenance of the court and the state.   They were to be selected for service regardless of their age or even whether they were married or not, but they fell under a separate set of rules from the men, because, well, patriarchy. So that's what happened when people were selected to serve, but who was selected?  The chronicles don't say explicitly until a decree about three years later in the 4th month of 676, when it was decreed that all those from provinces outside of the Home Provinces could enter the service of the sovereign, no matter their family's rank, whether Omi, Muraji, Tomo no Miyatsuko, or Kuni no Miyatsuko.  They would also allow men of quote-unquote “distinguished ability” enter service, even though they were commoners. From that we can surmise that when they are talking about “all” people really they are talking about “all” the nobility—the only people for whom the Nihon Shoki was really intended, if you think about it.  Thus, logically it would seem that prior to this only members of the nobility were allowed to enter government service—but there is even more.  Because before this pronouncement in 676, only people in the Home Provinces were theoretically allowed to enter government service. The Home Provinces, or Kinai, are traditionally the five provinces of Yamato, Kawachi, Izumi, Yamashiro, and Settsu.  At this point, though, Izumi was still a part of Kawachi, so it would have just been the four.  These provinces were likely the first lands to really come under Yamato's direct control, and as such they all held a certain pride of place.  This is also where we assume that the powerful families of Yamato had their strongholds.  Certainly the Soga, the Mononobe, and the Ohotomo all had claim to traditional land in and around this region.  When the court had moved to Ohotsu it would have been the first time in many years that the capital was moved out of the Home Provinces, which was probably a large part of the dissent expressed at the time.  How would you like it if your job up and moved two states away and forced you to relocate with them, likely at your own expense? In 676, though, the court decreed that it would no longer restrict itself to noble families of the Home Provinces, but instead would open up service, and the lucrative stipends that came with it, to members of the nobility in the rest of the archipelago. This seems particularly intriguing given the two swords we have from the time of Waketakeru no Ohokimi, aka Yuryua Tennou, in the 5th century, where elites had served—or at least claimed to serve—at his court.  It is possible that during his day the influence of Yamato was more expansive, and that influence contracted after him. Or it could be that it was a different type of service that they had provided. And then there is the comment in Ohoama's decree that the court would also allow men of “distinguished ability” to also enter service, even if they were commoners.  How very progressive.  This seems clearly designed to suggest the meritocratic system that was the ideal, even if it was only truly observed in the breach. I can't help but think about how this symbolizes the court's expanded control across the archipelago, and the idea that all of the archipelago was truly under their control.  It also meant that they had opened up the candidate pool to a wider audience.  Does that mean that they were growing the size of the government, too?  I also can't help but wonder how the old guard took this—the traditional families from the Home Provinces who suddenly found themselves competing with people from the periphery.  Did they see them as equals, or the equivalent of upstart country bumpkins?  And let's not even get started on anyone who joined government service as a Commoner. On the other hand, I suspect these new functionaries would have owed their position even more directly to the sovereign and the court, and they might not have strong familial ties to the local area.  This is all just theory, but seems to follow with Ohoama's general efforts at centralization and accretion of power and authority to himself whilst further building out the structure that his brother, Naka no Ohoye, had set up.  Along those lines, at the same time that the sovereign opened up membership in the court to those outside of the Kinai region, he also meddled with the incomes of the various Princes and Ministers.  He insisted that those Princes and Ministers who were receiving taxes from fiefs in the West—by which I assume is meant western Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu—they should instead get their income from fiefs in the East.  So he was taking away the western fiefs and instead swapping them with eastern fiefs.  Those western taxes could then, presumably, come straight into the government coffers, and the princes and ministers would be connected with land in the east, which I suspect meant they would be expected to invest in those fiefs and encourage them to produce. This feels like it goes along with something from two years earlier, in 675, the third year of Ohoama's reign.  In the second month of that year he abolished the serfs granted to the various Uji back in 664, and he abolished any claims by Princes—Royal or otherwise—as well as Ministers and Temples to any mountains, marshes, islands, bays, woods, plains, and artificial ponds.  It seems clear that he claimed the right of eminent domain to himself and the state.  By extension, all land effectively belonged to Ohoama, and everyone else became, de facto, his tenants.  They paid taxes up to him, and he had the right to grant or take away the land as he saw fit. I can't imagine that went over well with those who had lost their rights to those lands, but either he compensated in them in some other way or his power had grown such that they didn't dare to oppose him.  Certainly not everyone was happy. In 677, Saita no Fubito no Nagura was banished to the island of Izu for apparently scoffing—or otherwise disrespecting—Ohoama.  Well, it says his vehicle, but Aston notes that this is probably just a polite euphemism for the sovereign himself. But that rebuke seems to have been pretty light compared to two years earlier when a man—we aren't even given his name, assuming it was known, hiked up the hill east of the palace, cursed Ohoama, and then cut his own throat.  How it was known that he had been cursing anyone isn't explained—though perhaps he had written it down or otherwise communicated his intentions.  Either way, it was certainly a rebuke. But if it phased Ohoama, we can't tell.  He did give those on duty that night a step in rank, presumably for the trauma they had experienced in dealing with everything. Possibly related—we are told that same month there was a great earthquake.  So was that thought to be the curse being fulfilled?  There is nothing to connect them except that the one immediately follows the other. And yet, Ohoama would continue to rule as he saw fit.  In fact, he would rule roughly 14 years, in total, right up to his death in 686.  A rather substantial reign compared to so many other sovereigns.  And he would continue to make his mark. Next episode we will continue our journey through the reign of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tenno. Until then, if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

The group puts a plan together to find a lost royal.JOIN OUR DISCORDHelp support the show by visiting our Patreon and find even more content on our Website!Intro/Outro Music “Jotunheim (Chiptune Version)” Courtesy of Rush CoilOriginal Composition by Serpent Sound Studios

The group puts a plan together to find a lost royal.JOIN OUR DISCORDHelp support the show by visiting our Patreon and find even more content on our Website!Intro/Outro Music “Jotunheim (Chiptune Version)” Courtesy of Rush CoilOriginal Composition by Serpent Sound Studios

Dennis Cox & Chris Lea discuss Carolina Panthers GM Dan Morgan drafting Edge rushers Nic Scourton & Princely Umanmielen on Day 2 of the 2025 NFL Draft.

Join Ross Uglem for today's Packers draft profile on Ole Miss defensive end Princely Umanmielen. Don't miss it!Packers Draft Guide: https://draftguide.gumroad.com/l/greenbay25/dailyHomage: http://homage.sjv.io/Packers

Hana shines and Aya rises.Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.“It is selfish to believe that your family will always love you. At some point you will be asked to earn it.”My equilibrium decided to cut me some slack and not invoke the reflexive vomiting. "It is only me, Hana, Imogen, Deidre, Mom, Buffy, hi Juanita," I hadn't spotted my designated bodyguard standing behind Chaz."Don't talk to me right now," she seethed. "I'm furious with you." Yep, she was the Caribbean Buffy."Perhaps she's pissed about the five extra Illuminati bodyguards added to the regular two around Hana plus the two circling Ghost Tigers having not a fucking clue what those other armed parties are doing in Hana's company," Pamela joked. She could. Everyone else was giving me crap about my social gaff."Hey now. This meeting is important. Imogen and I are going to have a child," I enlightened them. The door chimed open and we piled in with two Amazons whose 'fresh' look indicated a use of the showers within the past ten minutes."You consistently maintain particularly low standards," Chaz dryly remarked."I sent her here for a check-up and that gave Buffy a chance to meet Mom, Deidre and Imogen, plus two unarmed bodyguards," I kept bailing out the Titanic."Chaz, I am happy we aren't going to miss this one (lunch)," Pamela smiled at her two grandsons."Cáel, are you going to tell your fiancée you've impregnated your aunt?" Chaz was back to being mildly sympathetic to my 'totally fucked-up' life."Yes. I figured Buffy shooting death rays at me from her eyes will garner me enough confusion to get the words out of my mouth without her throwing her drink in my face, slapping me, then storming out," I envisioned.I got no more shit until I reached the garage for my vehicle. There an armed FBI Special Agent Virginia Maddox (did you know when a Federal Agent adds 'Special' to their title it means they have a gun?) stood next to my chariot. She'd drawn the short straw, meaning she had been given the chore of driving today.I found myself wondering when Yasmin would finally finish her orientation. Her training involved some serious mental challenges including a crash course from the FBI at Quantico concerning modern judicial theory & practice as well as whatever pre-Iron Age jurisprudence the Host practiced.Javiera promised me (and Katrina) that she would not-so-subtly remind those scholastically-groomed legal minds that a (couldn't use the word 'Amazon') legal code they followed had existed, with minor tweaking, as a successful social instrument for over 3,000 years. If they truly behaved in a respectful manner, the owners of the code might even show those people the Codex on the original horse-skin, written in Hittite cuneiform.Anyway, everyone assumed I had a good reason for heading to my apartment (aka need to retrieve a sleepy Odette.) Had I repeated 'the Bitch stole my fortune cookies', they might have simply taken me to an Asian-inclined grocery store. As we hit the second story landing, Chaz in the lead, we heard a passel of folks come down toward us from the fourth level.I didn't think there were that many people on the entire floor. Chaz and Pamela each went for their holstered pistol, while keeping them hidden in their jackets. Wiesława, who went for her PDW, backed up so she could fire through the stairs from beneath.Juanita, bless her heart, and Virginia had remained in the S U V because sending in more people would have left us piled into one another. If a firefight did break out, Juanita could bring in some serious hardware to back us up while Virginia called the appropriate authorities before rushing in herself.Around the corner on the third floor landing came a number of women, early/mid-twenties, physically fit, foreign clothes and downcast expressions. A few looked like they were about to cry. They were all in shirts and jeans, with no obvious weapons. Not looking lethal didn't ratchet down Chaz's vigilance. Me? I was instantly reminded how much sex I had been missing."Prince Cáel! You are alive!" spilled out of the first one, a fiery red-head with a billowing, thick mane, porcelain skin and adorable freckles. Her Irish brogue was enchanting. I had to wonder if she cried out in Gaelic during orgasm. Wasn't I about to meet my future bride plus numerous other love interests?She was fit, curvy and wearing an aqua shirt which exposed her midriff with a belly ring bearing a pearl drop, the requisite tattered skin-tight jeans and soft leather calf-boots."Why wouldn't I be alive?" I grinned, like a pirate discovering an all-girls school oceanographic classroom in need of plundering."How do total strangers know how unlikely it is that you would still be alive?" was Chaz's spin on things."We talked with your roommate. He said you had moved to Svalbard where you suffered an excruciating painful, yet richly deserved, death in a lemming stampede," she pouted, "and then the UN had your ashes exiled to Pluto because the Sun was too good for you."9, 10, 11 --12 of them looking, 3 with pale blonde hair that eerily reminded me of my fiancée, another red-head, two russet and five with deep, dark brown, or black hair. They were all fit, fit, fit! With an air of 'I graduated college only to discover: 1) no one was hiring Saline Soil Scientists, or 2) I no longer want to do any of the things I wanted to do when I picked this major. I was familiar with both types.Timothy would have been at work and Odette would have invited the troupe in to regale them with all sorts of tales, which would have included a tour of my bedroom. They clearly had missed Odette so, now I recalled; that particular excuse was one of the ten I had given the guy in 4B should anyone suspicious come calling.I imagine twelve hot, English-as-a-Second-Language girls might be considered, a bit odd. See, his was my address of record. I lied about my actual apartment, so random people who came looking for me went to him instead. This arrangement had been made prior to my understanding of the nature of my employment at Havenstone.I'd neglected, telling him to move out and go far, far away? Poor guy. I'd find a way to make it up to him later."Actually it was a southern vole immigration incident that was set off by the Bulgarian consulate offering repatriation for the first 10,000 applicants," I frowned, clearly traumatized by memory of the incident."These poor southern vole, native to the vacationer-friendly Black Sea resorts, were accidently introduced to the coldest inhabited place in the Northern hemisphere and they've been trying to get home ever since, that would be the equivalent of a century and a half in 'vole-years.""Despite the UN trying to quarantine any news of this Cricetidae catastrophe, I decided to evacuate the six most critically injured vole using a Bortolanza Pluto ultralight, which he must have confused with the UN sending my ashes to Pluto," I explained.Mind you, the 'southern' voles are native to, among other places, Norway, the owner of Svalbard. They were also native to the Bulgarian Black Sea coast so, The Pluto ultra-light, once built in Italy, is now called the 'Puma' and made in Canada, has a maximum range of 675 km, which would leave me crash landing into the Barents Sea, 260 km north of the northernmost airport in Norway, rendering me and my voles so much frozen food."You are an animal rights activist too?" several of the girls gasped. Yes. Yes I was. I was an animal and I was all for me having rights."Please, don't tell anyone about this," I grew serious. "I don't want my philanthropic efforts to be publicized. What I do, I do for the Earth's endangered ecosystems because it is what everyone should do, not because we suddenly feel bad about neglecting it.""E haere koe ki te whai kia nui ai," Pamela snorted. I'd ask her why she knew Maori later, right after I figured why Grandpa knew it."Ko toku mahere whānui," I replied. The girls looked confused."I'm also trying to revitalize endangered languages and revive dead ones. It is more of a hobby than life pursuit," I informed them."You really are a modern-day noble warrior-poet," the red-head leader sighed."Nah. I'm just a guy," I shrugged. "Besides, Ba ch ir fear a bheith ar eolas ag a gn omhais, n  a oidhreacht." (A man should be known by his deeds, not his heritage)."Sa ch s go bhfuil misneach, t  s il agam," she replied using my 'family' motto."Jos on jalot on toivoa,", "Ahol van b tors ga, van rem ny," and "cesaret olduğu yerde umut vardır," all followed. 'Where there is Valor, there is Hope' in Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish. I got the sneaking feeling this wasn't a college field trip gone awry. These chicks were coming at me with a purpose that included more than sexual gratification and a kiss good-bye. Ugh."Thank you," I genuflected, paying honor to their reciting of my personal vow. "Anyway, you appear to be looking for me, but I am afraid I don't know any of you. Taking into account that I have a late lunch date with my fiancée in a half-hour and will be taking notes at a feminist convention at 8, what can I do for you?" I was establishing my escape plan."We have come here to join you," an assertive, dusky-skinned one smiled. I had to think about this. I was a bit tired. Taking all twelve of these girls on in one orgy was currently beyond me. I'd do eight tonight and the last four before breakfast tomorrow. Ah, happy thoughts of the Lacrosse Finals."What exactly do you plan to do with Mr. Nyilas?" Chaz interrupted."We are the (Irish) 'Na conairte soith an   S aghdha ar', (Hungarian) 'A szuka kuty kat Herceg Nyilas', (Turkish) 'Prens ok u Kaltak K pekleri' and (Finnish) 'Narttu koirista prinssi jousimies'," they chorused.Pamela snickered. All of those fancy sounding names were variations on 'the Bitch Hounds of Prince Archer/Nyilas (with the Irish going for O'Shea)."You want to be my bodyguards?" I gawked. Lacking lions, the Irish choice of the 'fur-balls of death' were hounds. Being women technically made them 'bitches'. I had to move fast. Any second now Wiesława was going to figure out these over-anxious non-Amazons were trying to replace her."You do realize I've left piles of dead bodies in my wake, right?" I nearly choked. Pamela slapped me on my back."Of course," they sounded so chipper. Fuck you Internet and 'First Person Shooter' games. This wasn't a fucking game! Trained combatants who joined my retinue met grisly ends and this was their freaking profession!"Can I think about it? I mean, do any of you have any combat experience at all? Attacked someone in anger? Send off a blistering instant message?""Some of us have (combat experience I was assuming). We won't let you down.""You do realize Ms. Dubois is going to kill them, don't you Sir?" Chaz sent me a chilling look."Ms. Dubois?", "who is that?" and "kill us?" floated around."Ms. Dubois is my blood-hungry ferret who wears a 'naughty berserker' human suit to trick the masses.""Three of us have military training," one of the Finns spoke up.By that they meant they had volunteered for military service in their native countries, then left after their first term because they found military life to be boring. On the 'plus' side, all but one had martial arts experience and six of the twelve had been a member of a Gun Club of some kind. Yep, Buffy was going to kill them, all twelve at once by herself."I'll make you a deal," I offered. Chaz was giving me his 'I'm a stone yet clearly unhappy with you' face. "At 7:15 tonight, you will show up at Havenstone. I will sign you in, we'll go upstairs to one of the gyms and then warm up for fifteen minutes. When you are ready, or 7:30 rolls around, we are going to the sparing mats. If I lose, you can stay. If you lose, you will write this off as one of a legion of ideas that look good in print yet are foolish in practice. Do you accept?""How many of us do you have to beat for us to join with you and your Crusade?" the lead Irishwoman asked."All of you. I will fight you all at once. The mat space is quite extensive.""You mean all twelve of us against you at the same time?" one of the Turks blinked in disbelief."Yes. I am not disrespecting you, any of you. You've shown initiative, courage and a spirit of adventure. I found all three to be both admirable and worthy of reward (i.e. I will gladly have sex with you). What I am also telling you is of the three people with me, the only one I can most likely defeat in single combat is her," I motioned to Wiesława, "and I'm only saying that because she is 19 and relatively new to the art of killing."Their eyes flickered to Pamela. Chaz was scary without even trying. Pamela could be threatening, or appear harmless, as she wished."Chaz is a professional military man from a long line of diligent warriors and in a branch of service that requires close contact with hostile individuals, teams, tribes, clans and nations.""The woman behind me is much, much worse. I've met precisely three people who could possibly kill her and I killed one of them. Would you agree, Chaz?""Absolutely," he concurred."We know who you two are," a Finn spoke up. She had a dazzling smile and cleavage that had to obscure her toes when she stood."You do?" Pamela played nice. For once, it was technology biting her in the ass, not me. Yay?"You are Rhingyll lliw Siarl Yfory," the Irish lass looked at Chaz. That was Welsh, and meant Color Sergeant Charles Tomorrow, I imagined his superiors in the British military weren't going to be happy with any of us, him being a 'secret military operator', emphasis on the 'secret'."And you are Sverkhsekretnykh Shpiona Vsemed Svaya," the Turkish girl pointed at Pamela. Pamela snorted. In Russian that meant 'Super-secret Spy Pamela Pile'. Since Pamela in Russia was pronounced 'Pamela' they had gone back to the origin of the name of Pamela, a fictitious 17th English novelist creation using mangled Hellenic, which translated as 'all-honey'.'All-honey' in Russian was Vsemed. Pamela snickered. Oh yeah, those twelve had combed through millions of articles and pictures to figure out who Chaz was and who Pamela claimed to be. Actually, one of my Hungarian admires back when we were all in Eastern Europe had suggested Pamela was a remorseful ex-SMERSH agent turned Princely-sidekick. Pamela jabbed me, the unspoken 'sidekick' thing.(For those who don't know, in Russian SMERSH loosely means 'Death to Spies', it really existed from 1943 to 1946 and was resurrected by Ian Fleming as a foil for James Bond.)"Chaz, since Cáel is, without a doubt, already having a stupendously wretched day, we must insist he inform Addison of all three of these developments, in person. I want to see the look on her face," Pamela plotted with the man who had thrown himself between me and an explosive vest, probably out of some psychic impulse that I would suffer far, far worse later, like in today, within less than 24 hours of said act."Why am I here again today?" I lowered my head and groaned."Are you okay?" a dozen innocent voices cried out."We are here to pick up Odette," Wiesława reminded me."Oh yeah, fortune cookies," I mumbled."Is 'Fortune Cookie' a nickname for one of your other operatives? Many of them are real enigmas. We can't find out anything about her," one of the Hungarians said. Yeah, because SD doesn't have a Facebook page, or Twitter account. Odette, she was protected by a completely unremarkable lifestyle, but I had a feeling that was fading fast."Excuse us," I asserted myself. "I need to get something on the third floor. Chaz began pushing forward while Pamela had my back."What are you doing?" to me and "Hey, is that a gun?" to Chaz, then Wiesława. Pamela was too sneaky to get caught."I'm here to pick up Agent Fortune Cookie then head out to a meeting with some really shady characters and my fiancée," I informed them."Agent Fortune Cookie," Chaz mused. "She's going to love that,""And then," Pamela continued."She is going to want a gun," I groaned.Oh goddess! No! Chaz had joined Pamela and my 'group think'."No, I have not," Chaz corrected me, about my mental ruminations."I've been coaching him," Pamela faux-consoled me. As my new prospective bodyguards parted for my current bodyguards,"Do you have psychic powers?" "Where is your android?" and "Is it true you can have sex up to ten times a day?""Yes, but we can't talk about it," then, "Which one? We have six models," and finishing up with, "Yes, I can have sex up to ten times a day with each session lasting at least an hour, though I do need breaks for food, drink, quiet romantic conversations and showers, cause shower-sex is so damn fun."While they mulled that over, I unlocked my door in time to see a nicely-dressed (as if she was about to go out on an expensive lunch date) Odette spring off the sofa. Looking at the crowd behind me, she blessed me with an incredibly happy smile."Oh cool! Do we really have enough time for an orgy?"I wanted to cry.(A Family FUNction, minus the 'fun' part)My fiancée giving me a congenial and contented look. Good.My fuck-buddy/friend Libra giving me a salacious 'you and me are going to hook up soon' smile while dressed in a red, 'business suite/slinky number' combo with a plunging neckline. I put her invite on my mental day-planner. Fellas, if you can't keep it in your mind, forget about it. Print equals pain, believe me.Brooke had joined the lunch group, sharing a smile and wink with Libra with the secret agreement for a three-way. Sweet! I could do this, hmm, lunch break Friday, yum-yum-yum. She was wearing a beige business suit with slacks, minus the shirt. Only her cunningly cut jacket kept her goodies from exposure.Hana was a saint for putting up with those two, and me.Buffy was studying me with the clear desire to put me in a dog cage for the rest of the week. Technically she had to produce my body for work Monday. As for the hot, sweaty, intense Brooke-Libra-Cáel m nage   trois, Buffy was reading the undercurrents and setting up a breakwater. At least her attire suggested well-paid, successful international assassin. I wondered if I had paid for her clothing as well. I'd given Chaz's wardrobe a serious upgrade courtesy of Pamela faking my signature.The gathering was rounded out by Mom, Imogen and Deirdre. Thank God they all had different hair styles and forms of dress. Mom was in 'casual-durable' attire, Imogen was going with the military-chic and Deirdre's get up was in the same style as Hana.I was pleasantly pleased that Hana had reserved two adjacent tables for what she assumed would be my support network, Pamela, Odette, Chaz, Wiesława and Juanita, plus Imogen's five and her (Hana's) two Illuminati minders. That made me squeezing my twelve newest over-eager admirers into the mix doable, if not comfortable. Better yet, none of the new girls was dressed for a restaurant this exclusive.Hana was quietly amused. Buffy was volcanic. Thankfully she was being a volcano on the mid-Atlantic ocean ridge ~ submerged."Chaz, Pamela, explain," Buffy seethed."I don't work for you," Pamela playfully bantered back, "Sweet-Cheeks.""They are part of a clandestine operation to provide cooperation and assistance from the European Union," I offered up in such a sincere manner. I almost had them. Buffy looked to Chaz who opted to channeled his 'inner- Cáel'."I can neither confirm nor deny their status as operators from four European nations," he nodded.Buffy forked a helpless appetizer shrimp then catapulted at one of my Finns, I thought it was Oili. It bounced off her bosom. She couldn't even claim to not have seen it coming."What?" Oili gasped."Operatives?" Buffy sizzled at me."Prince Cáel," Flannery asked, "why did that strange woman throw a, shrimp at Oili?""It was a hand-eye coordination test," Odette informed her. "Had Oili been a real spy, you would have snatched up a nearby napkin, deflect the item with the napkin and all while drawing down on her. It is what they do all the time. It is pretty neat to watch.""Why use a napkin?" Oili asked Odette while eyeing Buffy in case another decapod was coming her way."You use a napkin because the shrimp might have a contact poison on it," Odette rolled her eyes. "Buffy used a fork to flip it at you. She didn't use her hands, so the possibility existed." Pamela gave Odette an 'atta girl' high five."Prince Cáel?" Brooke giggled. "What have you been up to?""Okay. I got this. Ladies, may I introduce Annikki, Belgin, Berit, Flannery, Gizi, Ilkay, Kato, Neve, Nuray, Oili, Pirkko and Zsuzsi. These fine women have decided to put their productive lives on hold so they can be my bodyguards," I made the introductions."They have volunteered to be, basically the 'Hounds of Prince O'Shea/Nyilas/Archer'. My Hounds, please let me introduce Hana, my fiancée, Brooke, my close friend, Libra, a sweet & sincere childhood acquaintance, my Mother, Sibeal, my O'Shea aunts, Deidre & Imogen and Kalmarasērmi Buffy."Despite the absurdity of the situation and my clear irresponsibility, Buffy let a smile crease her frown. 'Kalmarasērmi' was my term for her in the Amazon language = my Mountaintop."I will volunteer my facilities to train them," Aunt Imogen offered me drolly. She was the primary trainer for all O'Shea guardians/Special Forces."Train us?" a half dozen voices murmured."Yes Child. I am Imogen O'Shea, Cáel is the greatest treasure in my life and I have serious doubts any of you can be anything more than distracting bullet-catchers for my favorite (and only) nephew. It annoys me to think you are yet another walking advertisement showing him to be both big-hearted and soft-headed.""I will offer prayers upon the mounds of my ancestors (lie, her only 'ancestor' refused to stay buried) for Cáel's safety. You should invoke whatever supernatural entity you place faith in to keep Cáel safe as well, because if he gets so much as a scratch defending any one of you, I will exercise my nearly endless knowledge of human pain to make you pay.""Is she Ms. Dubois?" Flannery asked Odette."That would be me," Buffy showered fury their way."Do you really want to kill us?" Neve tried to stare Buffy down."Until ten seconds ago, Yes. Now I want to hand you over to these two," she motioned to Deidre and Imogen with her fork."Prince Cáel, why are they all so hostile?" Flannery requested understanding from me. "We have come here to help you. We have skills. All we are asking if for a chance to prove ourselves to you.""To Us," Buffy snapped. "Cáel's vote doesn't count.""Chill, Buffy," I snapped back. "I'm dealing with this, and your lack of trust is pissing me off.""Buffy," Hana intervened. She placed a hand on Buffy's thigh out of sight, yet not outside of my notice. "When was the last time Cáel failed to take your advice on something life-critical? These young ladies appear to be honest and diligent. If not, Pamela and the Color Sergeant wouldn't have let them come here, or near Odette."If I dated dumber women I would have less explaining (lying) to do, but I'd miss the challenge both inside and outside the bedroom. Hana's deft touch and gentle words calmed Buffy more than anything (outside of a righteous cocking) I could have accomplished. I was suddenly seized with the realization there was a goodly number of Katrina's positive attributes in Hana. How had I missed it?"Marrying you is going to be Hana's first step toward mortal beatification," Brooke teased me. Normally only dead people were made saints."A Servant of, probably not Jehovah. I think everyone at the table can agree she has interacted with supernatural forces," Sibeal hid her joking well."Martyring her hopes of monogamy?" Deidre's fey gaze flickered over the women of note (the women at the main table)."Her Heroic Virtue is Prudence?" Buffy added. Buffy had been Catholic?"Ladies, I'm Lutheran. We don't normally venerate saints. Joking aside, I was given a reason to believe this lunch date was important on a social level between myself and my fianc . Food would be nice too."Brooke and Libra's presence regulated Pamela and Chaz to an adjacent table. A waiter slipped in, took my order, I decided to forgo an appetizer because I was late, then the conversation began."Hana, this is my Mother, Sibeal Nyilas. Imogen and Deidre are my family from Ireland," I made the introductions, most definitely unnecessarily. I was buying time to get a better read on the women around me."I know," Hana showered me with mature compassion."Get to it, damn you," Buffy huffed."Wow, I'm thinking of the best way to tell you this," I barely could meet Hana's eyes."I am pregnant with your fianc 's child," Imogen cut to the chase. What she said was delivered on purpose. Imogen wasn't as socially maladjusted as Rachel. The fewer women in my life, the easier the O'Shea would have roping me in. Imogen's words were meant to hurt Hana and drive a wedge between us."You too?" Hana's sad eyes studied Imogen. She hid her anger-disappointment-disgust well. In this crowd her efforts to obfuscate her feeling only worked on Libra and Brooke. Those two ladies were less astute at concealing their surprise."She's your aunt, right?" Libra's look settled on me instead of a blatant Imogen, or a pained Hana."No," Mom answered for me. "My sisters and I were born sterile. It is impossible that our paternal heritage has been passed along. Whatever Imogen's maternal contribution was, it is not from our DNA. My sister does have a child inside her, Havenstone verified it and will have the precise genetic make-up within 24 hours," she persisted (lying)."If Cáel has a failing, it is that he was seduced by my sisters who played upon his very confusing Mother-Son relationship. I faked my death when he was seven. I 'died' in a quite painful manner and he had to watch helplessly as he witnessed me wasting away. I did such a horrible thing to a young boy because the people who were hunting me down, the two O'Shea before you and the nine who aren't here, would have used numerous means of torture to verify my death."(Until they realized 'what' I was. Then my imprisonment would have begun)"My wonderful husband would have died without giving them the truth. It was too much to ask of our son. For fifteen years he believed me dead. He learned the truth at his Father's funeral. I believe every woman at this table knows my son doesn't handle emotional pain well.""Imogen's statement was a thinly-veiled stab at Hana's heart and a kick to my son's sense of responsibility to both Hana and his unborn child. How could this not hurt Hana? How could Cáel possibly respond, torn between the woman who has already sacrificed so much of her happiness for a man barely aware of his own maturity, and the woman bringing his child into the world?""Good one, Imogen. Those two are better than you, or I. By all means, make a mockery of my son, your nephew, who has pledged to fight for your life when he should clearly walk away and let the rest of you die. He asks nothing of you yet you feel no remorse at sullying his happiness.""There are ten good reasons for you getting up and walking out of here intact right now. There are six better reasons for making you pay for your cruelty," she threatened."Ten?" Brooke whispered."The sisters' five bodyguards, the two body guards they gifted me with, Deidre, Imogen and Cáel. You don't think he would let the woman bearing his child take a beating, do you Brooke?" Hana enlightened her."No.""The Six?" Libra scanned the room."My other two bodyguards won't act unless I am directly threatened. They won't be out to hurt anyone. If anyone tries to hurt me, they will jump straight to the making them dead option. The 'Six' are Buffy, Pamela, Chaz, Juanita, Special Agent Maddox and Sibeal.""We'd help," Libra insisted. Brooke was onboard with that proclamation."No," came forth from Hana, Mom and me."Brooke and Libra; you two, Odette, the other twelve and the wait staff will only confuse the issue. My sisters and their soldiers will use you and the rest to distract Cáel. Except for Ms. Maddox, the rest won't give a fuck so your best bet is to hit the deck and let the professionals deal with things," Mom clarified."Brooke, Libra, this is a wacko chicks with guns moment," I put things in perspective."Hana?" Libra put a hand on Hana's shoulder."Don't mind me," she patted Libra's hand. "I'm diving for cover and not getting up until you, Brooke, Cáel, or Buffy tell me to get up. Sorry Sibeal, but I don't know you that well yet.""I understand," Mom agreed.To punctuate the awkwardness of the moment, Aisha (the Arabic swimsuit model) and three other SD ladies waltzed into the place and took a table. When the maytre dee tried to impede them, Aisha threatened to exterminate his entire extended family with a look alone. Been there, done that, and the maytre dee was nowhere close to being in my league.I had to think that through. Had Buffy called them, the SD would have been here before I arrived. Pamela was a possibility, except the SD still hated her over Constanza's maiming. If she told them my life 'was' in danger, they would still show up. My life wasn't in danger and Pamela wouldn't yank their chain.It had to be Juanita. The head of my bodyguard telling Elsa that I was in an exposed position with 9 armed Illuminati would have elicited this level of response. Pamela prodded Odette. Odette had a 'what do you want me to do' non-verbal exchange with Pamela then got up and went over to Aisha.Odette even remembered to navigate the room in such a manner Aisha and her team could keep an uninterrupted view of the threat. Pamela and Chaz's lessons were paying off. They weren't training her in the lethal arts. They were showing her how to not be an obstacle, which was better, given our current circumstances."Hana, don't hate Imogen. The only parent she's ever known was Granddad," I returned my attention to the crisis at hand."Oh, I'm sorry," Hana sent sympathetic waves Imogen's way. If there was a hint of 'you bitch' hidden within those words, none of us would admit it."Yes, yes," Imogen smiled back. "Father was a real troll.""That's not true," Hana responded. "I've met him and he has always been very nice to me. It was easy for me to look past the nations of dead he's murdered, his propensity to rape his daughters and his plans to destroy my Cáel.""I don't hold you to blame for not protecting Cáel more than you have. He's a handful and reminds you of your Father, the mass-murdering rapist. And Imogen, don't try to hurt Cáel using me again, you Bitch. I'm not a part of your circus. That doesn't render me powerless. I love more than I hate. I count a person great by the lives they save, not those they take. Where there is Valor, there is Hope and my fianc  has both in spades. Do we understand one another?""Proving you are smarter than Ms. Sievert is not something which equates to being a threat," Deidre countered."Cáel, why aren't you saying something?" Brooke whispered to me."Because he knows better," Mom grinned. "This is a battle Hana has to win, or lose, on her own.""Cáel has plenty of women willing to go behind his back and kill people, Brooke. Now, if Hana asks for such a favor, we know it is not over some petty bullshit," rolled menacingly forth from Buffy as her feral countenance made a few of the Illuminati at the next table nervous."That won't be necessary," I broke up the tension. "We are as dysfunctional a family as they come, but we are family and we will all treat one another as such by the standards of the only one who matters. Clear?""You?" Deidre soothed me."No. Ferko Nyilas', my Father and the best man I've ever known. He taught me to never make excuses for your own behavior. Surrendering our control over our lives is a cop-out. If you want to continue acting like the creepy-ass bitch daughters of Cáel O'Shea, so be it. That is your choice to make. I care for you.""I care enough for you to fight Granddad over your futures. I hope all of you know I mean what I say. Whatever you decide to do, no matter how you act, I will always love you. I've made my choices and I am going to hold you responsible for yours. Let's eat lunch. It has been a rough fucking day and it isn't over yet."If there was ever any doubt, I destroyed those twelve hopeful bodyguards on the mats. They possessed neither the skill nor the savagery necessary in a warrior culture. We Amazons didn't recoil from pain. Our sisters' lives were on the line. That was why you practiced no-holds-barred fighting with, or without, weapons."We can learn," the lead Finn protested. The rest were getting over the physical and spiritual pain of being so easily beaten."My normal bodyguards go through three years of intense 24/7 training. Being a member of that elite body means you train in all forms of weapons as well as hand-to-hand combat techniques.""Once you've mastered the core physical and skill baseline requirements, and this core training never stops, no point is considered 'good enough', you begin learning at least two specialties. Those are disciplines such as close-protection, sniping, small unit tactics, infiltration, battlefield medicine, electronics, computing, communication systems, linguistics and 'training' expertise.""In my current team, the ones who fought at my side in Hungry and Romania, all have three specialties. Discounting their regimen since the age of five, each had been on the job in a professional capacity at least six years. The leader had eleven years in.""Finally, when you are at that level of excellence, you need a specific mindset. What you need to do is think why you shouldn't kill someone, not if you should. If there is any doubt, you strike. If you hesitate, someone close to you might be killed, not just me.""Look around you. If you aren't ready to kill for any of your companions, you will never cut it. Now, I'm going to have you shown out. I will have taxis take you back to your hotel. Think about it. Seriously, think about dedicating yourself to more than some stranger you've met on the internet.""You will be dedicating yourself to the other elven women in your group, to the death. That is the level of spiritual dedication it takes to be at my side. Go, take a rest, talk it over, search your souls. Call me if any of you want to continue and we can have lunch Sunday and make plans. Questions?""Do the other women around you do this, make those choices?" one of the Turkish women frowned while nursing a bruised jaw."No. They have it worse. They have thrown their old lives away, never to return. Each and every one has either murdered a human being, or attempted to, before they are even considered for the task.""Under normal circumstances, we wouldn't be having his conversation. You would never be given the chance. You are woefully unqualified in every way except spirit. Your willingness to cross the Atlantic to make your offers resonates with me, so I am both warning you this is horrible, horrible path you are taking and I am explaining precisely how slender any of your chances are of accomplishing your goals.""I, I don't know," whispered one of the Hungarian lasses."At the Seven Skulls, I led three such women into combat (Rachel, Charlotte and Saku) against a group of warriors who were fighting free of 500 elite Romanian Mountain Troops. Of the Romanians, nearly 200 were either dead, or wounded. The FBI Special Agent we took with us was badly wounded."One of the three was killed, a head shot, and the remainder left her body where she had fallen because the enemy were still out there and they had to protect me. The world will not bend to your sensitivities. Life around me is exceedingly dangerous and unforgiving," I finished.No immediate consensus united them. Fear and disbelief were the major vibes I was picking up. None of them were angry, insulted, or overly terrified."Time for you to go," Buffy concluded our meeting. "Tigger Maeve and Dora Farānak, would you please see Cáel's guests to the lobby." A new pleasure of Buffy's was using the House names of the Full-bloods she interacted with.I have taken a few mystic liberties:Maeve was a Celtic War Goddess ~ the Enslaver of Men.Farānak was a Scythian Goddess also known as the Lynx Goddess and the Silent Huntress.As for the other new hires:Daphne was, as explained earlier, of House Cotyttia (Thracian Goddess of Sex, War and Slaughter)Fabiola was of House Minerva (Roman Goddess of War & Strategy)Violet Maza was in House Oshun, the Yoruba Goddess of Love, Sexuality, Beauty and Diplomacy; Lady of the Orisha ~ life spirits.Paula Wadena was of House Cybele (Phrygian Earth Mother, Guardian of the Lion Throne)}They were dismissed and smart enough to know that was the best possible answer to their current predicament, learning your romantic adventure was actually a gory supernatural battle for survival. A growing number of Isharans had been gathering while I dealt with the wannabes. A few were amused, perhaps even understanding, of my actions.Soon enough, using her position as Record Keeper of House Ishara, Helena cajoled the other Amazons into giving us peace and quiet. Not all left. Watching a jury-rigged House Ishara work through its business in a semi-public setting was an event both unlooked for and possibly enlightening.For this gathering, we had 122 of the 159 members. The missing members were not close enough, or were providing a critical function that wouldn't allow them to be in New York on this night."Sisters, a moment of personal prayer for each of us to seek guidance from our Ancestors as we seek to continue their legacy," I intoned softly, calling the meeting to order.I had barely opened my eyes, failing to get any inspiration from Yakko, when the struggle began."Why are we including them in a House Ishara meeting?" Madori pointed out the three 'new hires' who were sticking around."Memasant (Amazon for to speak true)," I answered her. Since Daphne, Paula and Violet had clearly been sitting among us before the meeting began, I gave Buffy a disappointing frown. "Ishara respects these three for teaching the rest of you the Amazon language so that we can teach it to others, thus all of you becoming able to engage all our sisters in our native tongue.""I doubt any other House would extend this honor to others. Thankfully, we are not like any other House. We know better. We have all been outsiders. We aren't a 'normal' House and I am working toward us never being one. We have to be kind and just when necessary, and forgive when it is what the Host needs.""We will do this because we Isharans alone will decide on the prestige of our sisters. If the other Houses make an issue of it, who cares? None of them have made the sacrifices necessary to be Isharans. I know that you have not all gathered here tonight to hear me pontificate. Who wants to be first?""Will you accept a challenge?" Madori stood up. We had spread out in a ring, two Amazons deep, along the edges of the mats. I had never sat down."Put forth your complaint," I responded."You emphasize duties other than that of a House Head. You don't take the time to show up at initiation ceremonies. In essence, you ignore your sisters to advance your own prestige.""Yes, I am not showing up at the initiation ceremonies.""Yes, I prioritize other activities over running the day-to-day operations of our House.""Yes, you are utterly ignoring the two Amazons sitting at either side of me. I chose Buffy Ishara and Helena Ishara to lead this House because I knew I would have others issues coming up in my life concerning the Host.""Buffy, are you challenging me?""No, Wakko Ishara," she responded angrily. She wasn't angry with me. She had chosen the majority of the assembly and they were turning on me, thus her."Helena, are you challenging me?""No Wakko Ishara. I am intimately familiar with your work and the dangers you constantly confront for the greater Host," she answered in an equally hostile tone."Now that the issue of relevance has been dealt with, I will accept any challenge from any of you selfish, bigoted, power-hungry cunts who wish to put your own self-interest above that of our House. By all means, stumble over one another for the top spot," I mocked them. I'd played nice. No more.It was telling that my classification of any challenger was completely ignored. Madori and five supporters stood. In theory, challenges were the rare 1-on-1 Amazon experience. Another Amazon, Arianne, stood with another supporter."Cool beans," I nodded.I backed up, stepped off the mats and picked up the four axes I had pre-prepared. Back on the mat I went past my handful of supporters, brandished two weapons and advanced a quarter way onto the sparring area. The mass of my opponents muttered in confusion and resentment."Ishara, we have not trained in archaic weapons. Most of our facilities never had then," Madori protested."Amazons don't play fair," I glared. Several migrated to the walls to pick out whatever looked the least daunting. Buffy, Helena, Marsha, Daphne Cotyttia, Violet Oshun and Paula Cybele did likewise."Is this how you want to answer a challenge for leadership?" Madori glowered. "Cheating, utilizing a clear advantage in a farce of equality and justice?""No. Please step back and call every member of JIKIT," my eyes narrowed. "How about this, call the Amazon's contact with the Earth & Sky? Can't do that either? How about convince the 9 Clans to help us pursue a House obligation?""You duties as Chief Diplomat are not that of Isharan House Head and actually make you less of a House Head," she countered. She had chosen a short spear, using it two-handed. And that made Katrina what precisely?"I should fucking kill you," Buffy snarled."Madori Ishara, Dot-Ishara is not the Goddess of Scrabble. She is not the Goddess of," and Madori tried to catch me flat-footed with a spear-thrust. I was appalled at how easy I dealt with her. My right axe diverted her spear enough so when I twisted my stance, she missed. I placed the head of my left axe on her shoulder, blade against her throat."Madori, you lose. Sit back down and contemplate that you were beaten by a 22 year old man," I seethed. There was no 'you didn't give me a chance' bullshit. She had struggled for advancement in the Amazon way. Such people weren't crybabies. "Next."Arianne approached me with a shield and short sword. My read on the situation was she was going to use acrobatics to compensate for my superior reach. I readied myself."I don't suppose you would accept a suggestion we fight unarmed?" she put out there. I took two steps toward her then dropped my axes."I trust you," I looked down at her. I could see the 'oh, fuck me' written all over her face. The unfairness had been tossed in her lap. She put the point of her leaf-shaped blade under the left side of my ribcage, close to my kidney."Yield.""Never.""Yield, or I will kill you."I took a quarter-inch penetration when I clamped down on her right wrist and slammed my elbow into her face. A quick exchange of footwork ended up with both of us on the mat, Arianne on her back, sword pinned to the mat and her shield trapped between us. Head-butt followed head-butt until she was unresponsive.I stood up, blood oozing down my side."Water!" I barked. A bottled water was rolled my way. Three more Amazons were sizing me up. This challenge phase was far from over. I splashed water down on Arianne's face until she sputtered into wakefulness."Pathetic," I sneered at her. "This House is worth any and all of our lives. If you were the best candidate to lead this house and I refused to yield, then why did you spare me? Not only could you not kill me when you clearly could, you failed to do so even when it became an unequal contest of arms."Arianne was shamed and furious. I was treating her like a presumptuous, outsider woman."I'm feeling particularly generous in victory, Arianne, don't you dare stand up," I growled when she tried. "I will not kill you for your disrespect. I will not exile you from our House because doing so would show both of us failing to grasp one of the key principles of our People, learn. Learn and keep learning. A loss is nothing more than a temporary setback. Learn, don't repeat the same mistake twice and never stop striving for success until you take yourself to the cliffs."One of the two newes

The Prophet admonishes the Princes to stop evicting Jews from their ancestral land and expropriating the land in order to gift their own children and employees

This week Monte and Sal finish where they left off last week with a proposed Free Agency and a 7-Round Mock Draft based on what they did in Free Agency. Please Rate Us and Subscribe!Follow Us:@HesAGiantPod@montecri5to@queens_guy

Detroit Lions 2025 Senior Bowl Coverage & NFL Draft Preview The Detroit Lions' heartbreaking loss in the divisional round to the Washington Commanders left fans stunned, but there's no time to dwell on the past. With the 2025 NFL Draft approaching, the Lions have shifted focus to reloading their roster and identifying top talent. This week, our podcast takes you inside the 2025 Senior Bowl, where we're scouting potential draft picks, breaking down key performances, and bringing you exclusive player interviews. 2025 Senior Bowl: A Crucial Event for the Detroit Lions The Senior Bowl is a vital stop on the road to the 2025 NFL Draft, especially for the Detroit Lions, who are looking to add impact players on both sides of the ball. With key positional needs on defense and offensive line depth concerns, Detroit's front office and coaching staff are in Mobile, Alabama, evaluating some of the nation's best college prospects. This year's 2025 Senior Bowl features a stacked class of edge rushers, interior linemen, and wide receivers—positions the Lions could target early in the draft. Keep an eye on standout offensive linemen who could help bolster Detroit's protection for Jared Goff, as well as defensive backs who could strengthen the secondary. Exclusive Player Interviews & Draft Prospects to Watch On our latest podcast episode, we break down exclusive player interviews from some of the most intriguing prospects at the Senior Bowl. Among the standouts is a versatile defensive lineman who has been on the Lions' radar since the college football season ended. We also spoke with a high-motor linebacker whose leadership and play recognition could make him a perfect fit for Detroit's defensive scheme. As the NFL Draft 2025 approaches, the Lions' scouting department is working overtime to find talent that fits Dan Campbell's culture. From high-character players to explosive playmakers, Detroit's draft strategy is becoming clearer, and the Senior Bowl is providing valuable insight into who might hear their name called when the Lions are on the clock. Stay tuned to our podcast and blog for continuous updates on Detroit Lions draft targets, Senior Bowl analysis, and exclusive interviews as we count down to the 2025 NFL Draft. Be sure to use the Super Chat (or "Thanks" if you aren't watching live) function to ensure we read your question/message live and share our thoughts on it or to show us your support for doing the show. Using Super Chat and/or Thanks helps us out a lot, so thanks to everyone who uses them even if to just say 'hi!'. For folks who donate via Patreon, or via Super Chat you'll get to see your name highlighted onscreen with a message, you'll get a mention on our Twitter account, and you'll get a special thanks from us live during the show. Take advantage!! Don't forget to join us by calling in to the show at (248) 782-8384, or via Skype at 'DetroitLionsPodcast'. Get yourself a classic Detroit t-shirt at: https://bit.ly/3raeU96 Join the Patreon Crew at: https://bit.ly/2bgQgyj As an affiliate partner, we get a portion of sales when you shop Amazon at: https://amzn.to/2O8LUti Get your Lions Gear at: https://bit.ly/2Ooo5Px You can always support us by donating direct at: https://bit.ly/2qnEtFj #lions #detroitlions #detroitlionspodcast #onepride #nfl #goff #seniorbowl #SeniorBowl #SeniorBowl2025 #2025SeniorBowl #playerinterview #interview Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

CMFI Annual prayer and fasting crusade - KOUME2024. The burden and our heart cry to God is the revival of the people of CMFI worldwide

Step into the rich and vibrant garden of Puritan wisdom with Charles Spurgeon, one of the most beloved preachers and authors in recent Christian history. In Flowers from a Puritan's Garden, Spurgeon prayerfully selects and expands upon the profound insights and analogies gleaned from Thomas Manton's sermons. Each “flower” in this garden is a spiritual truth, lovingly cultivated and presented with Spurgeon's signature warmth, wit, and pastoral care. Whether you are a long-time admirer of Puritan writings or new to their influence, Flowers from a Puritan's Garden offers a refreshing and spiritually nourishing read. Perfect for daily devotions, personal study, or as a gift to those seeking encouragement in their Christian journey, this book will help readers to see the beauty of God's truth as it applies to our lives. Discover the timeless beauty of following Christ through the eyes of one of history's greatest preachers, and allow the truths in these pages to blossom in your heart. About the Author Charles Haddon (C. H.) Spurgeon (1834-1892) was a British Baptist preacher. He started preaching at age 16 and quickly became famous. He is still known as the “Prince of Preachers” and frequently had more than 10,000 people present to hear him preach at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. His sermons were printed in newspapers, translated into many languages, and published in many books.

Step into the rich and vibrant garden of Puritan wisdom with Charles Spurgeon, one of the most beloved preachers and authors in recent Christian history. In Flowers from a Puritan's Garden, Spurgeon prayerfully selects and expands upon the profound insights and analogies gleaned from Thomas Manton's sermons. Each “flower” in this garden is a spiritual truth, lovingly cultivated and presented with Spurgeon's signature warmth, wit, and pastoral care. Whether you are a long-time admirer of Puritan writings or new to their influence, Flowers from a Puritan's Garden offers a refreshing and spiritually nourishing read. Perfect for daily devotions, personal study, or as a gift to those seeking encouragement in their Christian journey, this book will help readers to see the beauty of God's truth as it applies to our lives. Discover the timeless beauty of following Christ through the eyes of one of history's greatest preachers, and allow the truths in these pages to blossom in your heart. About the Author Charles Haddon (C. H.) Spurgeon (1834-1892) was a British Baptist preacher. He started preaching at age 16 and quickly became famous. He is still known as the “Prince of Preachers” and frequently had more than 10,000 people present to hear him preach at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. His sermons were printed in newspapers, translated into many languages, and published in many books.

On this episode of the Sneaker History Podcast, Mike interviews Rockwell Princely, the designer behind the independent sneaker brand No Two Ways. They discuss the brand's journey over the past four years, the cultural differences in sneaker communities, and the importance of consumer psychology in design. Rockwell shares insights into the design philosophy behind their Model 1 sneaker, the challenges of maintaining quality materials, and the significance of collaboration and community engagement. The conversation highlights the brand's commitment to authenticity and innovation in a saturated market, as well as their future plans for growth and collaboration. In this engaging conversation, Rockwell Princely discusses innovative concepts in footwear design, including the unique idea of scented shoes and the misunderstood Koi-ry high top. He shares his personal favorites, upcoming releases, and the importance of building a strong brand identity. The discussion also touches on community engagement through loyalty programs, playful interactions with industry giants, and the deeper meanings behind sneakers. Rockwell emphasizes the challenges of sizing in the sneaker world and the significance of belonging within the sneaker community.Chapters00:00 Introduction to No Two Ways and Rockwell Princely03:05 The Journey of No Two Ways06:00 Cultural Differences in Sneaker Communities09:09 Consumer Psychology and Market Trends11:57 Design Philosophy Behind Model 115:10 Quality and Material Sourcing18:04 Collaboration and Community Engagement20:58 The Impact of Consumer Feedback24:13 Future Plans and Upcoming Collaborations55:42 Innovative Footwear Concepts58:51 The Koi-ry: A Misunderstood High Top01:01:12 Personal Favorites and Inspirations01:05:28 Upcoming Releases and Sneak Peeks01:10:46 Building a Brand Identity01:15:55 Community Engagement and Loyalty Programs01:20:58 Poking Fun at Industry Giants01:24:50 The Meaning Behind Sneakers01:30:40 Sizing Chaos in the Sneaker WorldJoin our Discord Community: https://discord.gg/xJFyWmWgzaEarly Access and Exclusive Videos On Patreon: https://patreon.com/sneakerhistorySubscribe on YouTube: https://youtube.com/sneakerhistory—–––– Check out our other shows: —––––For the Formula 1 Fans --> Exhaust Notes: https://exhaustnotes.fmFor the Fitted Hat Fans --> Crown and Stitch: https://crownandstitch.comFor the Cars & Sneakers Fans --> Cars & Kicks: https://carsxkicks.comFor the Creators --------> Outside The Box: https://podcasts.apple.com/id/podcast/outside-the-box-convos-with-creators/id1050172106—–––– EXCLUSIVE DEALS FOR YOU FROM OUR PARTNERS —––––[Links contain affiliate links, we may receive a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking a link. A great way to support the pod!]—––––—––––—––––—––––—––––—––––—––––—––––Our podcast is proudly...Livestreamed with StreamYard: https://streamyard.com?pal=6514386237915136Recorded on Riverside: http://www.riverside.fm/?via=sneakerhistoryDistributed By Captivate: https://bit.ly/3j2muPbGet in Touch: Robbie - robbie@sneakerhistory.comMike - mike@sneakerhistory.comRohit - rohit@sneakerhistory.comNick - nick@sneakerhistory.comFor advertising inquiries: podcast@sneakerhistory.comDisclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent.This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Spotify Ad Analytics - https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/ad-analytics-privacy-policy/

Princely filmmaker Lance Oppenheim speaks with Jon Dieringer about his new HBO docuseries Ren Faire. We talk about the genesis of the project, the research project, making it alongside his recently released feature Spermworld, and all the layers of palace intrigue within its unexpectedly twisty, treacherous story.Support the Show.The Screen Slate Podcast is supported by its Patreon members. Sign up and get access to bonus episodes, our lockdown-era streaming series archives, discounts from partners like Criterion and Posteritati, event invitations, and more.

If you follow Canadian politics, you know that Justin Trudeau's political career is now looking uncertain. He's been polling badly for months, as a series of crises have rocked the country, including the cost of living, the opioid crisis, the housing crisis, healthcare, runaway immigration, and foreign interference. Our guest on today's program has written a comprehensive biography of Trudeau as Prime Minister, based on interviews with more than 200 insiders, and the man himself — and today, he walks us through Trudeau's journey from being a global media darling to becoming one of the most divisive figures in the country. Stephen Maher is an investigative journalist and political writer. His new book is The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau. You can find Tara Henley on Twitter at @TaraRHenley, and on Substack at tarahenley.substack.com

Ole Miss football in the off-season added some elite-level (and high-priced!) tools to an already-pretty-stacked defensive line box.Walter Nolen (defensive tackle, Texas A&M) was ranked as the portal's No. 2 overall transfer. Princely Umanmielen (EDGE, Florida) was No. 6. He's the No. 7 returning EDGE in college football, according to Pro Football Focus. And now Umanmielen sits down with his new Ole Miss teammate (and position group member) Jared Ivey in an all-new edition of ‘Ivey League,' a podcast powered by RiverLand Roofing and exclusively associated with the Ole Miss Spirit/On3 (OMSpirit.com).Our Sponsors:* Check out PXG: pxg.com/toc* Check out Tecovas: www.tecovas.com* Check out eufyofficial.com/videolock today to see how you can gain complete control of your door.* Listen to NerdWallet's Smart Money PODCAST on your favorite PODCAST app. “Future You” will thank you.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

New Ole Miss edge rusher Princely Umanmielen threw Florida under the bus last week with his comments on the practice habits under Billy Napier. Entering a critical year, is it time for Gator fans holding out hope that this year everything comes together? SEC Unfiltered's Cole Thompson breaks down why this new is MASSIVE but not a death sentence walking into 2024. ⬇️ Support SECU ⬇️ PRIZE PICKS Use code "SECU" to receive a 100% deposit match up to $100. https://app.prizepicks.com/sign-up?invite_code=SECU&af_xp=social&source_caller=ui&pid=SECU&utm_content=SECU&utm_source=partner&shortlink=SECU&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=100depositmatch&utm_term=SECU&c=SECU MYBOOKIE Use code "SECU" at signup to receive a special Welcome Offer from MyBookie. https://www.mybookie.ag/ RHOBACK Use code "SECU" for 20% off your first purchase at https://rhoback.com/. Subscribe to SEC Unfiltered, the best SEC podcast on the internet: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sec-unfiltered/id1441899352 Website: https://www.secunfiltered.com/ Discord: https://discord.gg/ARtaSp25DH X: ​https://twitter.com/SECUnfiltered Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secunfiitered/ Facebook: ​https://www.facebook.com/SECUnfiItered Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/sec-unfiltered/id1441899352 Let's get it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ole Miss EDGE Princely Umanmielen had some harsh words for the Florida coaching staff following his transfer to the Rebels. Jake Rowe from DawgsHQ on the On3 network joins the show to talk about Georgia's spring practice. My former colleague Chip Patterson at CBS Sports released his list of the most intriguing spring quarterback battles has dropped. Let's break it down! Follow on social media: Twitter | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Threads | TikTok I am now a partner with BreakingT. If you want unique Braves or college football gear, check out the links below. I appreciate your support!!! Braves link: BreakingT.com/Barrett CFB Link: BreakingT.com/SmotheredAndCovered

On today's show, we discuss John Calipari staying put in Lexington, getting another chance to turn things around for the Kentucky Wildcats. And some takeaways from the awkward sitdown interview with AD Mitch Barnhart and Calipari on LEX 18 News as they had to act like they actually like each other. But what's Cal's approach to turn the tide for the Cats? And we discuss former Florida DE Princely Umanmielen now at Ole Miss, taking shots at his former coaches with the Gators. Circle November 23rd on your calendar with the Rebels travel to Gainesville, there will be no love lost between Princely and Billy Napier. Also Lane Kiffin discusses the new rule allowing him to communicate in the helmet with this QB, calling it "a cheat code, offensively." Lastly, we go Around The Conference with tidbits from LSU & Tennessee Pro Days, Oklahoma and South Carolina spring camps, and we get a glimpse of Mizzou's Faurot Field on the upcoming EA Sports new college football video game! Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!ManscapedGet 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code LOCKEDON at Manscaped.com.Bettor TogetherDownload the Bettor Together DFS app now from the app store, and sign-up using promocode LOCKEDON for a chance to win your share of over $1,000 in cash prizes. Amazon Fire TVFire TV recently created Fire TV Channels to deliver a constant supply of the latest videos from your favorite sports brands, all for free. That includes all of us at Locked On and most of the big pro leagues and college conferences as well. To Learn More, visit www.amazon.com/LockedOnFireTVNissanOur friends at Nissan have a lineup of SUV's with the capabilities to take your adventure to the next level. Take the Nissan Rogue, Nissan Pathfinder, or Nissan Armada and go find your next big adventure. Shop NissanUSA.com.LinkedInThese days every new potential hire can feel like a high stakes wager for your small business. That's why LinkedIn Jobs helps find the right people for your team, faster and for free. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/lockedoncollege. Terms and conditions apply.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDON for $20 off your first purchase.FanDuelNew customers, join today and you'll get TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS in BONUS BETS if your first bet of FIVE DOLLARS or more wins. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started. eBay MotorsWith all the parts you need at the prices you want, it's easy to turn your car into the MVP and bring home that win. Keep your ride-or-die alive at EbayMotors.com. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)

As March Madness takes a little hiatus, we turn to some more college football talk from the On3 Studios in Nashville. J.D. PicKell joins to discuss the new NFL rule changes and how it could translate over to the collegiate ranks. We also discuss Ole Miss transfer DE Princely Umanmielen and his comments at a media availability. How will Nebraska look with their new athletic director in Troy Dannen? All answered in this edition of Andy Staples On3 (0:00-0:49) Intro (0:50-21:53) NFL Rule Changes (21:54-38:25) Princely Umanmielen, Florida Discussion (38:26-54:14) Nebraska AD Troy Dannen Introductory Press Conference (54:15-57:58) Conclusion - Dear Andy Tomorrow! Email your questions to andystapleson3@gmail.com Want to watch the show on YouTube? Join us live at 8 am et, M-F, on YouTube! https://youtube.com/live/ljlefKG9Oi4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ole Miss EDGE Princely Umanmielen had some harsh words for the Florida coaching staff following his transfer to the Rebels. What does it mean for the Gators and, specifically, coach Billy Napier? My former colleague Chip Patterson at CBS Sports released his list of the most intriguing spring quarterback battles has dropped. Let's break it down! Follow on social media: Twitter | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Threads | TikTok I am now a partner with BreakingT. If you want unique Braves or college football gear, check out the links below. I appreciate your support!!! Braves link: BreakingT.com/Barrett CFB Link: BreakingT.com/SmotheredAndCovered

In Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia (Oxford UP, 2023), Dr Priyasha Saksena interrogates the centuries-old question of what constitutes a sovereign state in the international legal sphere. She explores the history of sovereignty through an analysis of the jurisdictional politics involving the princely states of colonial South Asia. Governed by local rulers, these princely states were subject to British paramountcy whilst remaining legally distinct from directly ruled British India. Their legal status and the extent of their rights remained the subject of feverish debates through the entirety of British colonial rule. This book traces the ways in which the language of sovereignty shaped the discourse surrounding the legal status of the princely states to illustrate how the doctrine of sovereignty came to structure political imagination in colonial South Asia and the framework of the modern Indian state. In this podcast, Dr Saksena explores how the various players within British India – international lawyers, British politicians, colonial officials, rulers and bureaucrats of princely states, and anti-colonial nationalists – used definitions of sovereignty to construct political orders in line with their interests and aspirations. By invoking the vernacular of sovereignty in contrasting ways to support their differing visions of imperial and world order, these actors also attempted to reconfigure the boundaries among the spheres of the national, the imperial, and the international. Our discussions chart the debates and disputes over the princely states across two hundred years of Indian history, and how they continually defined and redefined the concept of sovereignty and international legitimacy in South Asia. The podcast explores the importance of the language of international law, how it is used and by whom, and how it is both a counterweight and a shaping force for political power. We discuss how different understandings of sovereignty have been (and still are) influencing the various ways in which people think about organising the world and their relationship to each other. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession at the School of Law, University of Leeds, UK. His research focuses on lawyers, their professional self-identity and their motivations, and how these shape the institutions and the discipline in which they work. Twitter: @batesmith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In Sovereignty, International Law, and the Princely States of Colonial South Asia (Oxford UP, 2023), Dr Priyasha Saksena interrogates the centuries-old question of what constitutes a sovereign state in the international legal sphere. She explores the history of sovereignty through an analysis of the jurisdictional politics involving the princely states of colonial South Asia. Governed by local rulers, these princely states were subject to British paramountcy whilst remaining legally distinct from directly ruled British India. Their legal status and the extent of their rights remained the subject of feverish debates through the entirety of British colonial rule. This book traces the ways in which the language of sovereignty shaped the discourse surrounding the legal status of the princely states to illustrate how the doctrine of sovereignty came to structure political imagination in colonial South Asia and the framework of the modern Indian state. In this podcast, Dr Saksena explores how the various players within British India – international lawyers, British politicians, colonial officials, rulers and bureaucrats of princely states, and anti-colonial nationalists – used definitions of sovereignty to construct political orders in line with their interests and aspirations. By invoking the vernacular of sovereignty in contrasting ways to support their differing visions of imperial and world order, these actors also attempted to reconfigure the boundaries among the spheres of the national, the imperial, and the international. Our discussions chart the debates and disputes over the princely states across two hundred years of Indian history, and how they continually defined and redefined the concept of sovereignty and international legitimacy in South Asia. The podcast explores the importance of the language of international law, how it is used and by whom, and how it is both a counterweight and a shaping force for political power. We discuss how different understandings of sovereignty have been (and still are) influencing the various ways in which people think about organising the world and their relationship to each other. Alex Batesmith is a Lecturer in Legal Profession at the School of Law, University of Leeds, UK. His research focuses on lawyers, their professional self-identity and their motivations, and how these shape the institutions and the discipline in which they work. Twitter: @batesmith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Razak Khan's Minority Pasts: Locality, Emotions, and Belonging in Princely Rampur (Oxford UP, 2022) explores the diversity of the histories and identities of Muslims in Rampur-the last Muslim-ruled princely state in colonial United Provinces and a city that is pejoratively labelled as the center of "Muslim vote bank" politics in contemporary Uttar Pradesh. The book highlights the importance of locality and emotions in shaping Muslim identities, politics, and belonging in Rampur. The book shows that we need to move beyond such homogeneous categories of nation and region, in order to comprehend local dynamics that allow a better and closer understanding of the historical re-negotiations of politics and identities by Muslims in South Asia. This is the first comprehensive English-language monograph on the local history and politics of Rampur princely state, based on Persian, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi, and English archives and oral histories of Rampuris. The book provides insights into the various facets of the political, economic, religious, literary, socio-cultural, and affective history of Rampur and Rampuris in India and Pakistan. Anindita Ghosh is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her dissertation is about the histories of absorption of the eastern native states of South Asia into the nations and their socio- political afterlives in the post- colonial nations. Arighna Gupta is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His dissertation attempts to trace early-colonial genealogies of popular sovereignty located at the interstices of monarchical, religious, and colonial sovereignties in India and present-day Bangladesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Razak Khan's Minority Pasts: Locality, Emotions, and Belonging in Princely Rampur (Oxford UP, 2022) explores the diversity of the histories and identities of Muslims in Rampur-the last Muslim-ruled princely state in colonial United Provinces and a city that is pejoratively labelled as the center of "Muslim vote bank" politics in contemporary Uttar Pradesh. The book highlights the importance of locality and emotions in shaping Muslim identities, politics, and belonging in Rampur. The book shows that we need to move beyond such homogeneous categories of nation and region, in order to comprehend local dynamics that allow a better and closer understanding of the historical re-negotiations of politics and identities by Muslims in South Asia. This is the first comprehensive English-language monograph on the local history and politics of Rampur princely state, based on Persian, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi, and English archives and oral histories of Rampuris. The book provides insights into the various facets of the political, economic, religious, literary, socio-cultural, and affective history of Rampur and Rampuris in India and Pakistan. Anindita Ghosh is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her dissertation is about the histories of absorption of the eastern native states of South Asia into the nations and their socio- political afterlives in the post- colonial nations. Arighna Gupta is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His dissertation attempts to trace early-colonial genealogies of popular sovereignty located at the interstices of monarchical, religious, and colonial sovereignties in India and present-day Bangladesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Razak Khan's Minority Pasts: Locality, Emotions, and Belonging in Princely Rampur (Oxford UP, 2022) explores the diversity of the histories and identities of Muslims in Rampur-the last Muslim-ruled princely state in colonial United Provinces and a city that is pejoratively labelled as the center of "Muslim vote bank" politics in contemporary Uttar Pradesh. The book highlights the importance of locality and emotions in shaping Muslim identities, politics, and belonging in Rampur. The book shows that we need to move beyond such homogeneous categories of nation and region, in order to comprehend local dynamics that allow a better and closer understanding of the historical re-negotiations of politics and identities by Muslims in South Asia. This is the first comprehensive English-language monograph on the local history and politics of Rampur princely state, based on Persian, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi, and English archives and oral histories of Rampuris. The book provides insights into the various facets of the political, economic, religious, literary, socio-cultural, and affective history of Rampur and Rampuris in India and Pakistan. Anindita Ghosh is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her dissertation is about the histories of absorption of the eastern native states of South Asia into the nations and their socio- political afterlives in the post- colonial nations. Arighna Gupta is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His dissertation attempts to trace early-colonial genealogies of popular sovereignty located at the interstices of monarchical, religious, and colonial sovereignties in India and present-day Bangladesh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In this episode, Max is joined by Dalton Wasserman to discuss best fits for some of the remaining players in the transfer portal! (0:00) Intro (2:20) Raheim Sanders to South Carolina (5:18) Tyler Van Dyke to Wisconsin (14:00) Best Fits for Transfer Portal QBs (53:43) Best Fits for Top Players in the Portal (1:02:54) Bowl Game Previews! Make sure to join our Bowl Mania group for a chance to win a year PFF subscription! https://fantasy.espn.com/games/college-football-bowl-mania-2023/group?id=07690f6b-87f8-4cb9-be5c-9d265db7797d Preferred Walk-On is a college football show hosted by PFF's college football analyst Max Chadwick. We'll be interviewing the game's top players as well as diving into various topics around the sport! Subscribe so you don't miss a video! Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaxChadwickCFB TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maxchadwickcfb

Many believed that Florida edge rusher Princely Umanmielen would leave the program for the NFL. However, Umanmielen has announced that he will instead be entering the transfer portal. JOIN Gators Breakdown Plus: https://gatorsbreakdown.supportingcast.fm/ Get Florida Gators merch at Fanatics: https://fanatics.93n6tx.net/DVYxja Get Gators Breakdown merch: https://gatorsbreakdownmerch.com Questions or comments? Send them to gatorsbreakdown@gmail.com You can be the difference! For the first time ever, YOU can directly impact the outcome on the field by joining Florida Victorious! Want to help the Gators win? Want a better game day experience? Just like when you pack The Swamp, your unwavering support through Florida Victorious empowers the Gators to be their best! Join today and be the difference in making the orange and blue victorious. Visit https://floridavictorious.com/join-now/ and SAVE 20% on your first month using promo code: GATORSBD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the latest episode of Locked On Gators, the seasoned host, Brandon Olsen, delves into a pivotal development for the Florida Gators as star edge rusher Princely Umanmielen has officially entered the transfer portal. Olsen, with his characteristic depth of analysis, explores the implications, potential reasons behind this move, and the impact on the Gators' defensive strategy.As the host navigates through the potential factors contributing to Umanmielen's decision to enter the transfer portal, he explores various aspects, including playing time, coaching changes, and personal considerations. This comprehensive analysis provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of the complexities involved in such a pivotal decision for a star player.Olsen further engages the audience by speculating on the potential impact of Umanmielen's departure on the Florida Gators' defensive dynamics. The episode offers insights into how the coaching staff might adapt, who could step up to fill the void, and the strategic adjustments that may be necessary moving forward. This thoughtful examination ensures that fans are well-informed about the shifting landscape of the Gators' defensive lineup.Throughout the episode, Olsen maintains a balanced tone, presenting facts, potential scenarios, and offering his perspective on the broader implications. The discussion serves as a reliable source of information for Gators enthusiasts, keeping them abreast of the latest developments and sparking anticipation for how the team will evolve in the wake of Umanmielen's decision.Locked On Gators, under the expert guidance of Brandon Olsen, once again delivers a compelling episode that combines insightful analysis, comprehensive coverage, and a keen understanding of the pulse of Florida Gators football. As fans grapple with this significant development, Locked On Gators remains the go-to source for nuanced discussions that go beyond the headlines.https://joinsubtext.com/lockedongatorsLocked On Gators Discord: https://discord.gg/Rysm73k72YSupport Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Jase MedicalSave more than $360 by getting these lifesaving antibiotics with Jase Medical plus an additional $20 off by using code LOCKEDON at checkout on jasemedical.com. Athletic BrewingGo to AthleticBrewing.com and enter code LOCKEDON to get 15% off your first online order or find a store near you! Athletic Brewing. Milford, CT and San Diego, CA. Near Beer.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase.LinkedInLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONCOLLEGE. Terms and conditions apply.eBay MotorsKeep your ride-or-die alive at ebay.com/motors. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Right now, NEW customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get TWO HUNDRED in BONUS BETS – GUARANTEED. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)Princely Umanmielen to Transfer Portal - Florida Gators DB Coach Hiring Rumor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the latest episode of Locked On Gators, the seasoned host, Brandon Olsen, delves into a pivotal development for the Florida Gators as star edge rusher Princely Umanmielen has officially entered the transfer portal. Olsen, with his characteristic depth of analysis, explores the implications, potential reasons behind this move, and the impact on the Gators' defensive strategy. As the host navigates through the potential factors contributing to Umanmielen's decision to enter the transfer portal, he explores various aspects, including playing time, coaching changes, and personal considerations. This comprehensive analysis provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of the complexities involved in such a pivotal decision for a star player. Olsen further engages the audience by speculating on the potential impact of Umanmielen's departure on the Florida Gators' defensive dynamics. The episode offers insights into how the coaching staff might adapt, who could step up to fill the void, and the strategic adjustments that may be necessary moving forward. This thoughtful examination ensures that fans are well-informed about the shifting landscape of the Gators' defensive lineup. Throughout the episode, Olsen maintains a balanced tone, presenting facts, potential scenarios, and offering his perspective on the broader implications. The discussion serves as a reliable source of information for Gators enthusiasts, keeping them abreast of the latest developments and sparking anticipation for how the team will evolve in the wake of Umanmielen's decision. Locked On Gators, under the expert guidance of Brandon Olsen, once again delivers a compelling episode that combines insightful analysis, comprehensive coverage, and a keen understanding of the pulse of Florida Gators football. As fans grapple with this significant development, Locked On Gators remains the go-to source for nuanced discussions that go beyond the headlines. https://joinsubtext.com/lockedongators Locked On Gators Discord: https://discord.gg/Rysm73k72Y Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Jase Medical Save more than $360 by getting these lifesaving antibiotics with Jase Medical plus an additional $20 off by using code LOCKEDON at checkout on jasemedical.com.  Athletic Brewing Go to AthleticBrewing.com and enter code LOCKEDON to get 15% off your first online order or find a store near you! Athletic Brewing. Milford, CT and San Diego, CA. Near Beer. Gametime Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase. LinkedIn LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONCOLLEGE. Terms and conditions apply. eBay Motors Keep your ride-or-die alive at ebay.com/motors. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. FanDuel Make Every Moment More. Right now, NEW customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get TWO HUNDRED in BONUS BETS – GUARANTEED. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Princely Umanmielen to Transfer Portal - Florida Gators DB Coach Hiring Rumor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the latest episode of Locked On Gators, the seasoned host, Brandon Olsen, delves into a pivotal development for the Florida Gators as star edge rusher Princely Umanmielen has officially entered the transfer portal. Olsen, with his characteristic depth of analysis, explores the implications, potential reasons behind this move, and the impact on the Gators' defensive strategy.The episode opens with a detailed breakdown of Princely Umanmielen's contributions to the Florida Gators' defense. Olsen highlights Umanmielen's standout performances, disruptive plays, and the invaluable leadership he brought to the team. Listeners are taken on a journey through Umanmielen's standout moments as a Gator, underscoring the significance of his presence on the defensive front.As the host navigates through the potential factors contributing to Umanmielen's decision to enter the transfer portal, he explores various aspects, including playing time, coaching changes, and personal considerations. This comprehensive analysis provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of the complexities involved in such a pivotal decision for a star player.Olsen further engages the audience by speculating on the potential impact of Umanmielen's departure on the Florida Gators' defensive dynamics. The episode offers insights into how the coaching staff might adapt, who could step up to fill the void, and the strategic adjustments that may be necessary moving forward. This thoughtful examination ensures that fans are well-informed about the shifting landscape of the Gators' defensive lineup.Locked On Gators, under the expert guidance of Brandon Olsen, once again delivers a compelling episode that combines insightful analysis, comprehensive coverage, and a keen understanding of the pulse of Florida Gators football. As fans grapple with this significant development, Locked On Gators remains the go-to source for nuanced discussions that go beyond the headlines.https://joinsubtext.com/lockedongatorsLocked On Gators Discord: https://discord.gg/Rysm73k72YSupport Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Jase MedicalSave more than $360 by getting these lifesaving antibiotics with Jase Medical plus an additional $20 off by using code LOCKEDON at checkout on jasemedical.com.Athletic BrewingGo to AthleticBrewing.com and enter code LOCKEDON to get 15% off your first online order or find a store near you! Athletic Brewing. Milford, CT and San Diego, CA. Near Beer.GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase.LinkedInLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONCOLLEGE. Terms and conditions apply.eBay MotorsKeep your ride-or-die alive at ebay.com/motors. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Right now, NEW customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get TWO HUNDRED in BONUS BETS – GUARANTEED. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)Florida Gators EDGE Princely Umanmielen Enters the Transfer Portal, Skips NFL Draft Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the latest episode of Locked On Gators, the seasoned host, Brandon Olsen, delves into a pivotal development for the Florida Gators as star edge rusher Princely Umanmielen has officially entered the transfer portal. Olsen, with his characteristic depth of analysis, explores the implications, potential reasons behind this move, and the impact on the Gators' defensive strategy. The episode opens with a detailed breakdown of Princely Umanmielen's contributions to the Florida Gators' defense. Olsen highlights Umanmielen's standout performances, disruptive plays, and the invaluable leadership he brought to the team. Listeners are taken on a journey through Umanmielen's standout moments as a Gator, underscoring the significance of his presence on the defensive front. As the host navigates through the potential factors contributing to Umanmielen's decision to enter the transfer portal, he explores various aspects, including playing time, coaching changes, and personal considerations. This comprehensive analysis provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of the complexities involved in such a pivotal decision for a star player. Olsen further engages the audience by speculating on the potential impact of Umanmielen's departure on the Florida Gators' defensive dynamics. The episode offers insights into how the coaching staff might adapt, who could step up to fill the void, and the strategic adjustments that may be necessary moving forward. This thoughtful examination ensures that fans are well-informed about the shifting landscape of the Gators' defensive lineup. Locked On Gators, under the expert guidance of Brandon Olsen, once again delivers a compelling episode that combines insightful analysis, comprehensive coverage, and a keen understanding of the pulse of Florida Gators football. As fans grapple with this significant development, Locked On Gators remains the go-to source for nuanced discussions that go beyond the headlines. https://joinsubtext.com/lockedongators Locked On Gators Discord: https://discord.gg/Rysm73k72Y Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Jase Medical Save more than $360 by getting these lifesaving antibiotics with Jase Medical plus an additional $20 off by using code LOCKEDON at checkout on jasemedical.com. Athletic Brewing Go to AthleticBrewing.com and enter code LOCKEDON to get 15% off your first online order or find a store near you! Athletic Brewing. Milford, CT and San Diego, CA. Near Beer. Gametime Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONCOLLEGE for $20 off your first purchase. LinkedIn LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONCOLLEGE. Terms and conditions apply. eBay Motors Keep your ride-or-die alive at ebay.com/motors. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. FanDuel Make Every Moment More. Right now, NEW customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get TWO HUNDRED in BONUS BETS – GUARANTEED. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Florida Gators EDGE Princely Umanmielen Enters the Transfer Portal, Skips NFL Draft Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the up-and-coming ED prospects for the 2024 NFL Draft is Florida Gators Princely Umanmielen. He is one of the top prospects to watch when the Gators face off with the Utah Utes tonight. No Cam Rising at quarterback for the Utes. Can they hold off the Gators and protect their home field? One of the under-the-radar quarterbacks in the 2024 NFL Draft is Nebraska's Jeff Sims. DP believes Sims has all of the tools to be a top QB prospect in Matt Rhule's pro-style offense. Wide receiver Jahmal Banks will have DP's attention when Wake Forest takes the field. The guys are 0-1 when "Facing The Spread". Will they rebound this week? The guys go through a few of tonight's games and throw them into the "Pick Em" fire.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!GametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNFL for $20 off your first purchase. Last minute tickets. Lowest Price. Guaranteed.Underdog FantasyThis episode is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy! Sign up HERE with the promo code LOCKEDON to get your first deposit DOUBLED up to $100.Must be 18+ (19+ in Alabama and Nebraska, 21+ in Massachusetts and Arizona) and present in a state where Underdog Fantasy operates. Terms apply. Concerned with your play? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit www dot ncpgambling.org; In Arizona call 1-800-NEXT-STEP; in New York, Call 1-877-8-HOPENY; in Tennessee, call 1-800-889-9789eBay MotorsFor parts that fit, head to eBay Motors and look for the green check. Stay in the game with eBay Guaranteed Fit. eBay Motors dot com. Let's ride. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply.LinkedInLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONNFL. Terms and conditions apply.FanDuelMake Every Moment More. Right now, NEW customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get TWO HUNDRED in BONUS BETS – GUARANTEED. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the up-and-coming ED prospects for the 2024 NFL Draft is Florida Gators Princely Umanmielen. He is one of the top prospects to watch when the Gators face off with the Utah Utes tonight. No Cam Rising at quarterback for the Utes. Can they hold off the Gators and protect their home field? One of the under-the-radar quarterbacks in the 2024 NFL Draft is Nebraska's Jeff Sims. DP believes Sims has all of the tools to be a top QB prospect in Matt Rhule's pro-style offense. Wide receiver Jahmal Banks will have DP's attention when Wake Forest takes the field. The guys are 0-1 when "Facing The Spread". Will they rebound this week? The guys go through a few of tonight's games and throw them into the "Pick Em" fire. Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Gametime Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNFL for $20 off your first purchase. Last minute tickets. Lowest Price. Guaranteed. Underdog Fantasy This episode is sponsored by Underdog Fantasy! Sign up HERE with the promo code LOCKEDON to get your first deposit DOUBLED up to $100. Must be 18+ (19+ in Alabama and Nebraska, 21+ in Massachusetts and Arizona) and present in a state where Underdog Fantasy operates. Terms apply. Concerned with your play? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit www dot ncpgambling.org; In Arizona call 1-800-NEXT-STEP; in New York, Call 1-877-8-HOPENY; in Tennessee, call 1-800-889-9789 eBay Motors For parts that fit, head to eBay Motors and look for the green check. Stay in the game with eBay Guaranteed Fit. eBay Motors dot com. Let's ride. eBay Guaranteed Fit only available to US customers. Eligible items only. Exclusions apply. LinkedIn LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONNFL. Terms and conditions apply. FanDuel Make Every Moment More. Right now, NEW customers can bet FIVE DOLLARS and get TWO HUNDRED in BONUS BETS – GUARANTEED. Visit FanDuel.com/LOCKEDON to get started. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's no secret the Florida Gators have a lot of work to do on the defensive side of the ball. As far as players go, Princely Umanmielen moves to a new position at edge to help the turnaround. David Waters sits down with Umanmielen to discuss his new role, new coach, and more! Topics include: -How the move to edge rusher happened and how the position is different -The difference between Austin Armstrong and Patrick Toney -NIL with Florida Victorious -Funny Napier story JOIN Gators Breakdown Plus: https://gatorsbreakdown.supportingcast.fm/ Get Florida Gators merch at Fanatics: https://fanatics.93n6tx.net/DVYxja Get Gators Breakdown merch: https://gatorsbreakdownmerch.com Questions or comments? Send them to gatorsbreakdown@gmail.com College programs must be competitive in Name, Image, and Likeness. Florida Victorious provides valuable NIL opportunities for Gator student-athletes thanks to fans who support UF athletics. Florida Victorious is the lead NIL entity for Gator Nation, donors, and partners and you can become part of the team by joining today. Your support allows the Gators to be competitive in NIL. To learn more, strengthen Gator Athletics, and join in helping make the orange and blue victorious, https://floridavictorious.com/join-now/ SAVE 20% on your first month using promo code: GATORSBD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Young Meleager enjoys the quiet of the forest, until his father, King Oeneus, shouts through the trees to wish him happy birthday.  They return to the palace for the festival of the first fruits, and everyone celebrates!  But they have made a terrible mistake – which places their kingdom in dire peril. Combining the artistry of foremost contemporary theater-makers with the timeless stories of Greek myth and the imaginative power of audio, Live from Mount Olympus is an adventure for tweens and their grownups. The podcast is a production of the Onassis Foundation, co-produced by the Brooklyn-based theater ensemble The TEAM, and directed by Tony Award-winner Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown, Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet), Zhailon Levingston (Chicken & Biscuits, Director of Initiatives at Broadway Avocacy Coalition), Ahmad Simmons (Performer in Hadestown, Carousel, Westside Story, Associate Choreograph, Hadestown), and Keenan Tyler Oliphant (Associate Director, Hadestown & Director, PlayCo's Will You Come with Me?). Karen Brooks Hopkins is our executive producer. Our series creator and showrunner is Peabody Award-winning producer Julie Burstein. Our actors include: Carlo Alban, Ben Beckley, Kayla Bennett, Sumaya Bouhbal, Vinie Burrows, Sean Carvajal, Jill Frutkin, Abel Garcia, Divine Garland, Halima Henderson, Joanne Hernandez, Monée Cheri Hunter, Modesto “Flako” Jimenez, Libby King, Ian Lassiter, Zhailon Levingston, Christian Liberus, Nehemiah Luckett, Kimberly Marable, Jake Margolin, Justin Medina, James Harrison Monaco, Gregg Mozgala, Xavier Pacheco, Elena Reyes, Mickey Robinson, Cat Rodríguez, Max Samuels, Kristen Sieh, John Turturro, Jillian Walker. And André De Shields is Hermes Special thanks to Adrienne Hopkins, Caroline Hopkins, and Natalie Hopkins. This season, The TEAM's Interim Producing Director Nidia Medina and Producing Associate Chandler Smith led production, with support from the new Producing Director Emma Orme. We had casting support from Melissa Friedman of Epic Theater Ensemble. Our writer is Nathan Yungerberg. Yonatan Rekem is assistant editor and Claire Striet is our production assistant. Audio production and mix by John Melillo. Music composed by Magdalini Giannikou, and performed by Banda Magda. Jason Adam Katzenstein created our illustrations and is series humor consultant. A big thank you to our creative advisors: Dr. Michael Cohen, Effie Tsiotsiou, Dr. Janet Handler Burstein and Richard Nodell. Michael Kendrick is Program Director for Onassis USA and Olivia Buntaine is antiquities consultant for our show. Marketing by Causelab. Social Media management by Milagros Verendia. Press by Blake Zidell. Graphic design by Onassis Creative Studio. Live from Mount Olympus was recorded with tracking engineers Marc Frongillo and Violette Furton at Dubway Studios and Roy Hendrickson at The Power Station at Berklee NYC. This season is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Janet Handler Burstein, who believed that these myths continue to express our human struggle to understand ourselves and the world we live in. Since 1975, the Onassis Foundation has been dedicated to culture, community, and education, with projects that can effectively inspire social change and justice across borders. Learn more at www.onassis.org. Live from Mount Olympus is distributed by PRX.