Podcasts about Tang

We continue to look at the life and times of Uno no Sarara, aka Jito Tenno, female sovereign ruling in her own right.  We look at some of the places she traveled to as sovereign and, ultimately, what she did to ensure that her grandson would succeed her. For more, check our podcast blog page:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-154 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 154: Queen Uno no Sarara, Part II   Light drifted in from outside the grand audience hall.  It filtered through barred windows and screens, and glinted off of bright gold and bronze accents, as well as the polished stone floor.  Upon a raised dais, surrounded by curtains, sat the tennou, arrayed in all of his youthful majesty.  Before him were princes and high ranking nobles, dressed in their finest court clothing.  Rich brocades of silk and black gauze hats only added to the pomp and circumstance of the moment. The nobles bowed and brought out a small tray.  Upon it were seventeen scrolls, freshly made, representing the latest updates to the laws and punishments of the land.  The nobles presented the work they had overseen, the culmination of a year's effort to further bring into line the organization of the state.  Off to the side, behind a screen of her own, Uno no Sarara watched the proceedings.  She thought back on all that had happened to bring them to this point.  This glittering hall was a far cry from the plain wooden structures of the old Kiyomihara palace.  And while she had never visited them, she could only imagine that this must rival the courts on the continent.  Everything that she and her husband had worked and fought for—all of the battles  they had fought, and all of the friends and children they had lost—she watched as it all came to fruition. The court was never going to be entirely peaceful—there would always be those striving for wealth and power, however they could attain it—but at this moment she no doubt felt as confident as she ever had that her efforts hadn't been for naught.  No matter what happened from here, the State, and her line, would continue.   So let's recap: We started with Part I of Uno no Sarara's reign back in episode 152, and then last episode we took a bit of a detour to go more in depth on the history of Ise and of the worship of Amaterasu more generally.  We talked about how there is good reason to believe that Ise shrine's prominence—and even many of the stories about Amaterasu and her importance in the story of the royal family—were either created or at least emphasized during the reigns of Ohoama and Uno no Sarara.  We ended with a discussion of the Jingikan, the newly created government organization developed to deal with so-called "Kami Matters", formally bringing the administration various shrines under the administration of the State.  Specifically it seems to have focused on State sponsored rituals.  I have no doubt that they took charge of the rituals at court itself, and they were likely involved in the worship at Ise Shrine, as well as the shrines of Tatsuta and Hirose.  On the other hand, as with the spread of Buddhist temples, direct State control was likely limited, at least at this stage, likely focused on the most influential institutions. This episode I want to continue with Uno no Sarara's reign.  She continued to make her mark on the court, tweaking how things worked, especially around the concept of rank.  And then there were her various travels.  These were mostly to her palace in Yoshino, but several other journeys, including a tour of the land of Kii—modern Wakayama prefecture—as well as a visit to her half-sister, Royal Princess Asuka. For all of that, however, the entry in the Nihon Shoki ends with what was perhaps one of the most direct and unique things she did:  Ensuring a smooth transition of power to her grandchild, Prince Karu. And while in this episode we'll (spoiler alert) cover both this power transition and Uno no Sarara's eventual death, we won't be done with her reign and its impact after this episode.  After all, there is still a lot going on around this time, and multiple different threads to pull on.  I expect several more episodes to cover things, such as the creation of hunting and fishing preserves, Buddhist merit-making, crime and punishment, and more.  There are also a few more people to talk about, such as Kakinomoto no Hitormaro, the court poet, and Fujiwara no Fubito and the establishment of the Fujiwara family as we know it.    So let's take a look at Uno no Sarara and what she was up to. She was still very much putting her stamp on things, tweaking the codes and making edicts.  One of the more impactful edicts would seem to be one where she had the government officials and people of the Home provinces all divided into nine classes.  This seems to be introducing yet another rank system, though this one is a bit more technical than the ones that came before. For one thing, it divided everyone up into nine ranks.  To do this, the court were going to take a look at a period of up to 6 years for those who already had rank and up to 7 years for those who did not.  The court—presumably court appointed judges—would use that period to evaluate individuals and slot them into a new system of nine classes.  Those in the first four classes would be given cap-rank based on their individual merits, the services that they had performed, and the importance of their house.  There isn't really a mention about the other five classes, but as they were theoretically the lower classes of society, it may not have been quite so pertinent.  BTW, of the three things that they were using to determine cap-rank, that last one, the importance of the individual's house, strikes me as the nod to the fact that the Japanese had not yet gotten away from the idea of "kabane" type hierarchy.  Granted, it isn't like family was unimportant in the Tang court, the Japanese were just being much more blatant and direct about it. Once everyone was properly sorted into the appropriate cap-rank, new edicts were issued on the official court clothing, which we discussed in Episode 150, and if you check out the blogpost you should be able to see what that looked like. I would note that the cap-rank system would eventually go away and be replaced by a rank system also based on 9 ranks, which then were broken up into upper and lower and junior and senior, so very similar to what we see with cap-rank, with some slight changes.  Uno no Sarara continued to make tweaks to the system, while working on the various large scale projects of the reign.  She wasn't exactly a homebody, however.  As she did all of this, she was regularly taking trips away from the capital. For example, between 689 and 697 she took at least 30 trips to visit Yoshino, sometimes taking as many as five trips in a year.  These were often short—a couple of days and then back to the grind of the court.  However, that's all that we get.  Based on the dates, we can at least make a few inferences.  For one, she was going down in all seasons, so she really must have enjoyed it, and it doesn't seem like it was attached to any particular official date or ritual.  Perhaps it just got her away from the pressure of official life. Some of her travel appear to have been work trips.  Her travel to Ise, which we talked about in the previous episodes, as well as things like traveling to visit the Castle of Takayasu and also to inspect horses at the embankment of Wani-no-kami.  Those appear to have been both trips where she was keeping an eye on things. Other trips, however, provide fewer details.  Mostly we know where she went.  This included trips to Hatsuse, Kii, Takamiya, and Yonabari, in Uda.  We are also told she ascended the Peak of Tou no Mine and later that she made another journey out to the Futatsuki Palace—presumably at the same place.  And we also have a trip out to the country-house of Royal Princess Asuka. Now Hatsuse, Kii, and Uda are all places we've previously talked about.  They are all on the Kii peninsula.  Hatsuse—or Hase—and Yonabari, in Uda, are both due east of modern Sakurai, following the Yamato upriver and then branching off to the aptly named Yonabari river.  These areas are well-referenced in the rest of the Nihon Shoki.  "Kii" is a bit more ambiguous.  Kii refers to the entire land of Kii, or Kii no Kuni—by the way, if you are familiar with the Japanese bookseller "Ki-no-kuni-ya", that name directly references the land of Kii as the family who started it were from Wakayama in Kii, where they served under the Kishu—or Kii—branch of the Tokugawa family during the Edo period.  That said, there were others who also used the name "Kinokuni" as a locative name as well, and you will occasionally see it here or there, even outside of the famous bookstore. The land of Kii is basically all of the southern Kii peninsula.  On the west side, it starts at roughly Wakayama, and includes the mountainous regions south of the Nara basin, wrapping around to the east side of the peninsula, to just south of Ise.  Today it is split between Wakayama prefecture and parts of Mie prefecture, including the towns of Kihoku—literally "Northern Kii"—and Taiki—"Big Kii".  Today, "Taiki" is part of the Watarai district, Watarai being the name of the location where Ise shrine was located.  So you can see that Kii basically included everything from one side of the peninsula to the other. Most of the time, though, I would generally assume that travel to Kii is a reference to the nearby area of Wakayama, especially as there are other references to that area in the form of hunting and fishing restrictions, which we'll discuss more fully in a later episode. This particular trip to Kii sounds like it was a bit of a longer trip, incorporating several locations.  We know that it took roughly eleven days—about a week and a half.  That's enough time to do quite a bit of sightseeing.  In fact, shortly before leaving, Uno no Sarara says that she is going on a "tour" of the land of Kii, and as such the land-tax and poll-tax for Kii would not be collected for a year, since, instead, they were expected to support her visit so that she could travel in appropriate style and so that temporary palaces could be made available for her use.  Kii is an interesting place for Uno no Sarara to visit.  It is mentioned occasionally throughout the chronicles, and its position puts it squarely in Yamato's sphere of influence.  At the same time, its mountainous nature means that it was never quite as populated as regions like the Nara basin or the Kawachi plains, where the large, flat areas were better suited to wet rice paddy agriculture.  In Kii, there are only a few areas really suitable for supporting large populations through agriculture alone, and even today the mountains make travel and construction in the area more difficult, so you don't have the highly concentrated population centers as in other regions.  The area around modern Wakayama city provides some of the best land for agriculture, with some other coastal regions as well. But it is mountains that Kii is known for, and the mountains often have spiritual significance.  Mt. Koya, or Koyasan, would be found in 805 as the center of Shingon Buddhism, but well before that you have the Kumano shrines, also known as the Kumano Sanzan—the three mountains of Kumano. There is a lot of evidence that worship at the three mountains of Kumano was heavily influenced by Buddhism and Buddhist traditions, but that this was a later influence on areas that were already important spiritual sites well before Buddhism arrived in the archipelago.  The exact nature of worship is debated, but the area was important, with "Kumano" once treated as its own land, overseen by the Kumano Kuni no Miyatsuko.  The deities of Kumano and the area more generally features in the Nihon Shoki in the legendary stories of Iware Biko, aka Jimmu Tenno. The Kumano shrines are, ultimately, a series of shrines in the Kumano region, roughly 20-40 kilometers from each other.  There are three main shrines—Kumano Hongu Taisha, Kumano Hayatama Taisha, and Kumano Nachi Taisha—known as the three mountains.  There are numerous other shrines as well.  There are three main deities worshipped, but then also another nine that are considered important as well, for at least twelve kami.  The three main kami – Kumano Musubi no Ohokami, Hayatama no Ohokami, and Ketsumi Mikoto Ohokami – are also considered to be manifestations of Izanami, Izanagi, and Susano'o.  Izanami and Izanagi are famously the progenitor kami of the archipelago, while Susano'o is the storm and ocean deity said to be the rambunctious and troublesome brother to Amaterasu Ohokami.   It is quite likely that the connection with these other kami—who feature prominently in the later stories, was actually a later addition.  Similarly, around the 9th century, the Kumano shrines were heavily influenced by Buddhism, which often co-opted indigenous kami worship by associating the native kami with incarnations of Buddhist figures.  In this case:  Thousand-armed Kannon, Yakushi—or the Medicine—Buddha, and Amithabha.  I must say that associating Amithaba—or Amida—with Susano'o seems like a bold move.  The deity who tossed a backwards flayed colt into Amaterasu's weaving hut is also the Buddha who made the promise that all who call on his name would find their way to the western pure land? I guess. Together, the kami of Kumano are known as the Kumano Gongen, and there is a pilgrimage trail, even today, that leads between the various shrines and peaks, as well as various temple complexes in the area. There is one other interesting connection with Kumano shrines, and that is the fact that there is a Kumano Taisha up in the Izumo region.  Today, they claim that despite the names being identical, there are no actual ties between Kumano Taisha and the Kumano Sanzan.  The Kumano Taisha of Izumo is actually considered the Ichinomiya, or most important shrine, of Izumo—even more important than the famous Izumo shrine, itself.  It lies 30 minutes south of modern Matsue, and enshrines a kami known as Kushi-mikenu-no-Mikoto, said to be another name for none other than the famous Susano'o. Kumano Taisha claims to have been first mentioned in the Nihon Shoki back in the time of Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tennou, in an entry from 659, though that entry simply states that the Izumo no Miyatsuko was to repair the shrine of the "Itsuki" kami, and doesn't specifically mention Kumano Taisha by name.  There is an entry attributed to the Izumo fudoki, which claims a shrine was located on Mt. Kumano, identified with modern day Tenguyama.  And then, Kumano Taisha appears in the Engi Shiki in the 10th century.  Suffice it to say, there are many different ways that this can be interpreted. Scholars have attempted to look into the potential connections between Kumano Taisha in Izumo and the Kumano Gongen of Wakayama, but it does not appear that there is a fully formed consensus.  I would note that we certainly see various important worship centers branching out throughout the archipelago, setting up branches elsewhere, and we also see the association of various local kami with other, more famous kami, making the claim that they are simply another name for the same entity.  This would appear to be one way to bring different groups into communion with each other, as it were, and helping to gloss over the potential difficulties found in diverse belief and worship practices. As a side note, there is at least one other Kumano Taisha of note, found up in the Tohoku region.  It claims to be the "Ise of Tohoku", with a focus on Izanami and Izanagi.  It seems to claim a founding around the early 9th century at the Tenno's request.  Given that, I think we can ignore it for our current discussion. To bring this all back around, it is unclear if Uno no Sarara's tour of Wakayama included the Kumano shrines at this time.  Certainly Kumano would play an important role in the legends and stories that the court was putting together, but what structures were in place at this point in the story are unclear.  Her tour may have focused much more on the area around modern Wakayama.  Her tour of the area took a total of eleven days, which is more than enough time to have seen a fair bit of the area, and certainly would have been enough time to get down to the Kumano region, but we don't have any clear details that I see to say exactly what happened. Still, I do find it interesting to look at the juxtaposition of the Kumano shrine story with that of Ise.  Both took on some aspects of the official stories of the founding of Japan and appear to have been important shrines for the court to some extent, and both the trip to Ise and the trip to Kumano were events such that local taxes were commuted for a time to help pay for the royal visit. But whereas Ise would go on to reject the merging of Buddhism with local kami worship, Kumano appears to have embraced it.  Kumano worship took on a highly syncretic character, with Buddhism and Kami worship becoming inextricably intertwined, maintaining that character even today, despite numerous historical attempts to extricate the two from each other. Ultimately, Ise shrine would take pride of place as the national shrine of the royal family, but I can't help but wonder what would have happened if Kumano had been more ascendant. Getting back to our discussion of Uno no Sarara's various peregrinations:  we also have what appear to be two trips up to Tou-no-mine—the modern pronunciation for the name which Aston transliterates as "Tamu no Mine".  This is the peak where, about forty years earlier, Takara Hime is said to have built a circular enclosure and called "Futa-tsuki" or two "Tsuki" trees palace.  It was also known as "Ama-tsu-miya", the Heavenly Palace.  The modern Tou-no-mine is a mountain to the southeast of Asuka, however, there is also a theory that the Tou-no-mine and Futa-tsuki palace were actually on a small hill just due east of the Kiyomihara palace site.  This is where we find walls, the Sakafune-ishi stone, and other examples of work from the time when the Futa-tsuki palace would have been built. That said, to get to Tou-no-mine, we are told it was a two day trip—one day out and one day back.  That said, it wouldn't have all been spent traveling.  In fact, Tou-no-mine, today, is under two hours walking distance.  The site by the palace is much closer, and the entry for going to the Futatsuski is only mentioned on a single day.  So none of that is particularly helpful, in my opinion.  Ultimately, we know that it was a location near Asuka and that it was associated with Takara Hime, the last female sovereign in her own right—even though her reign was arguably run largely by her son, Crown Prince Naka no Oe. Speaking of whom, Naka no Oe was not only the father of Uno no Sarara, but also of Royal Princess Asuka.  So when Uno no Sarara went to Asuka's country house, also known as the Denso or Tadokoro, she was actually going to pay a visit on her own half-sister.  By the way, "country-house" is the Aston translation.  A more direct translation might be something like "Field Place".  It was a private estate belonging to powerful families, such as the local elites—or in this case the royal family.  It is a rare glimpse into the living conditions of those royal princes and princesses who were not resident in the palace itself.  I do find it interesting that it specifically identifies the royal princess and not some male relative or husband—and Uno no Sarara isn't really noted as visiting a lot of family members all over the place.  I've seen a suggestion that Asuka may have been married to Prince Osakabe, one of Temmu's sons, but if so it is interesting that Uno no Sarara goes to visit *her* house and not *his* house. Princess Asuka is not mentioned much, but given this and a few other things—including being mentioned in the Man'yoshu in connection with a poem by the famous Kakinomoto no Hitomaro—she seemed to be someone important, even though we don't have a lot of information on what that looked like at the time. And with that, we've covered most of Uno no Sarara's travels.  We discussed her near-constant trips to Yoshino, then there were official visits to inspect the fortifications and horses.  Granted, that latter duty was also done just at the palace, in Asuka, so it wasn't necessarily terribly special.  There was her expedition to Ise, which we discussed in a previous episode, and then down to tour the land of Kii.  There were short jaunts out to Hatsuse and Yonabari.  And the largely unexplained visits to Tou-no-mine and the enigmatic Futa-tsuki palace.  Finally, there was a note about her calling on her half-sister, Princess Asuka. So that was what Uno no Sarara was doing when she wasn't at the court.  Otherwise, whether it was in the Asuka Kiyomihara palace or in the new Fujiwara Palace, she was dealing with the business of the state.  Much of what is recorded are fairly common things—banquets, archery competitions, and similar events that are interesting in aggregate, perhaps, but maybe not so helpful in figuring out the larger trends that were occurring at the time.  There were edicts and changes, but we can talk about those separately.  There were natural disasters, as well. Overall, she spent eleven years on the throne, from 686 to 697.  In that time, she finished much of the work started by her husband, put her own stamp on the new government, and, perhaps most importantly, she set up her grandson for success.  It is worth nothing that Uno no Sarara's posthumous regnal name is Jitou Tennou, and while that was probably not something she chose for herself, it may give us some insight into how the Chroniclers viewed her.  Remember that the brothers, Naka no Oe and Ohoama, were given the names "Tenji" and "Temmu", respectively.  Tenji is "Heavenly Wisdom", and he is counted as the brains behind the Great Change, the Taika reforms, and much of the shape that the state took from 645 onwards.  Temmu is something like "Heavenly Warrior".  The victor of the Jinshin no Ran was remembered for his military strategy, even though that was really only a small part of his overall reign.  The characters of Jitou's posthumous title are two characters.  The first, "Ji", means "to hold" or "to have".  The other character is "tou" and generally means "relationship" or "to control".  It can also refer to unification. This is often considered to mean that her role was seen as continuing to hold the throne and continue the work of her husband and his line, his progeny.  In this case, that means strengthening the state that Ohoama had built, following through on his national projects, and ultimately ensuring that the throne passed seamlessly to Ohoama's grandson, ensuring that his line would continue.  Of course, it probably should be noted that of course it was also her own bloodline that she was continuing as well, something that would become important in later years. And it is easy for us to look at this as simply editorializing by the Chroniclers, who were, after all, trying to craft a national narrative as well as record the history.  In many ways the use of these posthumous titles allowed them to do that—to summarize an entire reign into something that could be easily remembered.  And yet, based on the actions that she has taken, there certainly seems to be something to this description of Uno no Sarara and her motivations. We saw, early on, how she cleared the way for her own son, Crown Prince Kusakabe, getting rid of his potential rival for the throne, Prince Ohotsu, and thus potentially averting another conflict at the start of the reign.  But then Kusakabe died, leaving her with his young son, and while placing a young infant on the throne might have become a thing in later centuries, that precedent had not quite been set just yet.  Even as it was, Uno no Sarara likely had some concept that she could not know how many years she would get.  A decade on the throne was nothing to sneeze at, and many sovereigns had much less.  And so, beyond setting up the structure of government that her grandson would inherit, she also had a few more things to ensure.  She would want him to be old enough to be taken seriously, and she would need to make sure that there were no other claimants that could complicate matters.  There was only one other serious candidate that fit that description, and that was Prince Takechi. Remember, Prince Takechi was Ohoama's eldest son.  He was also a maternal descendant of the Munakata, meaning that he didn't have the double-royal imprimatur that was presumably required to take the throne as the sovereign.  And yet, Uno no Sarara was no doubt savvy enough to understand that those kinds of traditions changed quickly and easily in the past, as long as one had the right political backing. At the same time, Uno no Sarara appears to have leaned heavily on Prince Takechi's support.  It was a risk, but his support for her efforts would help her do what she needed to do.  Not only that, but if anything did happen to the young Prince Karu, Prince Takechi was the next in line.  He was also the Dajou Daijin—the most powerful court position short of Uno no Sarara herself.  For many reasons, it would have been difficult if the Queen felt she needed to take him out of the picture. Perhaps then it was fortuitous that in 696 the issue resolved itself, when Royal Prince Takechi passed away. This was no doubt a sad event, and yet it also may have set things in motion.  Prince Karu had been born in 683, so he was fourteen years old—still quite young, but old enough.  He was also surrounded by supporters, including his own mother, widow to the late Prince Kusakabe, Royal Princess Abe. While it isn't mentioned in the Nihon Shoki, we get a glimpse of how all this was planned in the Kaifuso, published in 751.  There, in an entry for Prince Kadono, a son of Prince Ohotomo, we are told that after Prince Takechi's death, Prince Kadono met with Uno no Sarara and others and suggested a course of action.  He encourage Uno no Sarara to pass on the kingdom to Prince Karu, despite his youth.  If true, this is quite the statement from someone whose own father was killed in the Jinshin no Ran, which brought Ohoama and Uno no Sarara to power in the first place.  It appears as though she heeded his advice, setting up what would come next over the following year. And so it is from the year after Prince Takechi's death that we start to really see entries focused on Prince Karu.  In the second month of 697, for instance, we see that Tahema no Mabito no Kunimi was appointed to be Prince Karu's tutor.  Likewise we see Michi no Mabito no Atomi and Kose no Ason no Ahamochi appointed as director and assistant director of the Spring Palace—the palace for the Crown Prince, the Heir Apparent.  Interestingly, Aston notes that the Nihon Shoki never actually gives an entry for when Prince Karu was named Heir Apparent—it just seems to be assumed. Ten days after the new directors were appointed, a public great-congregation was held at the Crown Prince's palace—here called the Eastern Palace, and I'll admit I'm not sure if "Eastern Palace" and "Spring Palace" were different names for the same place or what.  I assume these were all part of the newly built Fujiwara Palace, though the most important part is the implications for Prince Karu.  He was being introduced to the court, it seems, with a large congregation at his residence where the court would be expected to acknowledge his position as the crown prince and heir apparent. Three months later, we are told that Uno no Sarara grew ill.  The Ministers and various government officials made votive images of the Buddha in an attempt to make merit and help her to recover.  While she would recover from whatever illness she experienced, I suspect that this was something of a wake-up call.  Uno no Sarara was in her early 50s, and she wasn't getting any younger.  She also lived at a time where she had to realize that many others hadn't made it as far, and perhaps her illness made her realize that if she was going to do something, she had better do it sooner, rather than later.  And so, just a little more than a month later, on the first day of the 8th month, Uno no Sarara abdicated the throne in favor of her grandchild, Prince Karu, soon to become the next Tennou. This isn't the first time we've seen an abdication in the history of Yamato, but it is perhaps the first time we've seen it quite like this.  When Takara Hime abdicated, I think we can agree that it was largely under duress.  She had just seen her son lead a bloody coup against the most powerful court nobles, and that really does seem to have shaken her.  No such bloody struggle was happening here, however.  In fact, there is plenty to suggest that avoiding a bloody struggle was exactly Uno no Sarara's point.  By overseeing Prince Karu's ascension while she was still around, Queen Uno no Sarara maintained significant control over the process. Part of this rested on the fact that when she retired from the position of Tennou she didn't just become some commoner or retreat to the position of Queen Mother or Dowager Queen or something similar.  Instead, she took on a new titled:  Retired Sovereign, or Dajou-Tennou.  Technically this means that her own title was something like "Greater Sovereign", compared to Karu's "sovereign".  This position was new, and may not have even been fully formed at the time of the initial abdication.  Unlike when Takara Hime abdicated, effectively acknowledging that she wasn't actually in charge, Uno no Sarara was planning to remain an active force in government.  Her grandson would be set up as the formal sovereign, or Tennou.  He would be responsible for the rituals and ensuring everything was properly carried out, but his mother, the Dajou-Tennou, would have a tremendous amount of clout and control. By all accounts, this abdication and creation of the "Dajou-Tennou" position really does seem to have been specifically set up for this occasion, to ensure the smooth transition of power.  This way, when Uno no Sarara eventually did pass away, there would be no question about who was seated on the throne.  Given everything she had witnessed—from stories about her how her own father had come to power as well as the events of the Jinshin no Ran and then everything that happened in the aftermath of her own husband's death—I can understand why Uno no Sarara would have been pre-occupied with the idea of ensuring a smooth transition to the next sovereign.  She likely could not foresee how this new position would be used in the future, and yet it would become something of a staple in the politics of the Japanese court. Initially, retired sovereigns were typically doing so for reasons similar to Uno no Sarara—to ensure a smooth transition of power from one to the other and to ensure that the next tennou could be established to avoid instability.  However, it would become something even more.  After all, why wait until your heir is actually ready?  If you are going to be running things, anyway, why not remove yourself from the tedium of ritual while retaining your authority?  And in later centuries we see the tennou retiring younger, leaving younger and younger heirs to hold the actual throne.  There would also be a certain Buddhist aspect to it as well, allowing the retired tennou to be seen as a kind of Golden Wheel Turning Sovereign who was theoretically beyond the material cares of the day to day.  The retired sovereigns would be referred to as "In", which is likely a reference to the suffix given to their compounds, rather than the common "Miya" or "Gu".  And so the government under these retired sovereigns would become known as the Insei, or government by cloistered sovereigns, but that system was still in the future.  For now, we are just seeing the seeds of what was to come, eventually. To understand this later phase of Uno no Sarara's life, we need to take our first few steps into a new source:  The Shoku Nihongi.  The Nihon Shoki ceases to describe anything after Uno no Sarara's abdication, and the official history of Prince Karu's reign—known to us as Monmu Tennou—is taken up by the Shoku Nihongi.  This is literally the continued Japanese history, and we'll talk about it in depth at some point.  For now, I would note that it was compiled in 797 – so literally a century after the last entry in the Nihon Shoki.  That said, it likely had much better records to go off of compared to the Nihon Shoki, though it was still likely compiled with a view that was still quite friendly towards the royal family and the position of the Tennou. And so, when Uno no Sarara largely disappears from the narrative, I don't know that we should assume that she had truly gone completely hands off.  After all, with everything we've seen, do we think that this is a woman who would just hand the reins over to a fourteen or fifteen year old boy?  And yet the first time she appears is in 701, when she is making a trip to her favorite vacation spot:  the Palace at Yoshino.  That said, there were some pretty big events that happened during this period, after her abdication and assumption of the title of Dajou-Tennou.  The biggest was the creation of the Taihou Code.  Once again, this will need a fuller treatment, but the Taihou Code was an update to the Kiyomihara code.  The Asuka-Kiyomihara code was 22 volumes, and focused on  the laws, the "ryou", but not necessarily the punishments, or "ritsu".  In contrast the Taihou code was 6 volumes of "ritsu" and 11 volumes of "ryou", for 17 volumes in total.  Unfortunately, we mostly have scraps of indications here and there, and the codes that came afterwards, which were each based on what came before.  For instance, we do know that they completely overhauled the rank system yet again.  Unlike the Kiyomihara  code, which took years to develop, the compilation of the Taiho code is ordered in 700 and completed by 701—likely because it was really more of an update and a compilation of what was already on the books. This was perhaps the most significant thing that happened while Uno no Sarara was still available to exert her influence.  Karu was still only about 19 years old at this point.  He would turn 20 the following year, 702.  That same year, Uno no Sarara would travel all the way out to Mikawa no Kuni, which is the eastern half of the modern prefecture of Aichi.  The royal procession, which started in the 10th month of 702, then made its way back through Owari a month later, and from there up to Mino, and then down to Ise and back through Iga.  The royal procession is first recorded on the 10th day of the 10th month and returned on the 25th day of the 11th month—a round-trip time of roughly 45 days.  Throughout we are told that various ranks and awards were given out to important individuals at each stop. Unfortunately, that trip may have taken a toll.  A few weeks later, on the 13th day of the 12th month, Uno no Sarara grew ill.  There was a great amnesty pronounced throughout the realm, and one hundred men took Buddhist vows on her behalf.  They even read the Sutra of Golden Light in the Home Provinces.  Alas, it was all to no avail.  Uno no Sarara passed away on the 22nd day of the 12th month—or January 13th in 703.  It was roughly six years from her abdication.  She would have died with at least some knowledge that the realm was largely in order.  Her grandson was on the  throne and had been ruling for the past six years.  He had attained the age of majority, and things seemed relatively stable.  There was even a new, grand, permanent capital city, just like on the continent. But that closes out the life of Uno no Sarara.  She lived in interesting times, experienced tremendous fortune and misfortune, and she put her indelible stamp on the state of Yamato and thus the future of Japan.  There is still more to go over in this period—we have interactions with the Emishi, updates to society, and various impacts to Buddhism.  We'll also take a look at some more important people from this period, including Kakinomoto no Hitomaru, the famous poet, and the poems of the Man'yoshu, and Fujiwara no Fubito, the son of Nakatomi no Kamatari and the one largely responsible for making the Fujiwara house the most influential house in the entire court. 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.

At some point you're going to be ready to start dating. How do you know when it's the right time? And when it is the right time, how do you go about dating in a God-gloriying way?

Isaac opens our ROMANS series with an expository message through Romans 1.(Sorry for the bad audio, the original recording from the desk messed up)

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This commercial airline pilot has a second career leaves passengers smiling after they land. Happy hour at one assisted living facility was on the rocks until this octogenarian stepped in. As CNN Heroes celebrates 20 years, we revisit a 2012 Hero who turned sports into a path to recovery. The winners of the “world coolest marathon” share what it takes to run at the top of the globe. Plus, one psychologist explains why making fewer decisions might lead to a happier life.  Host/Producer: Krista Bo Polanco  Producer: Eryn Mathewson, Leying Tang   Senior Producer: Felicia Patinkin  Editorial Support: Jackson Loo, Christie O'Reilly, James Mazzullo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the 996th episode of the PokerNews Podcast, which is sponsored by FanDuel Poker, Chad Holloway sat down with Punnat Punsri and Danny Tang, two titans on Triton Poker. Both have had a ton of success on the high-stakes tour, and they offer fans a glimpse into that world. From Tang's recent $3.5 million win in Montenegro to winning a WSOP gold bracelet, and Punsri's 2025 GPI Player of the Year win to his recent Peak Humanity Charity Poker Event in conjunction with Henry Kilbane and the CSOP. The duo covers plenty of ground. Plus, what does the future hold for poker in the Asia-Pacific region? Is it possible the World Series of Poker will return? What's coming up for Triton Poker? Find out the answers to those questions and more in this episode featuring two of the game's best players. A new PokerNews Podcast drops four times a week in July! You can expect a new episode every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday at 8a PT / 11a ET / 4p UK time. Remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you do not miss an episode! Time Stamps *Time    Topic* 00:00 | Welcome to the show 00:17 | WSOP Store 01:20 | Winning Triton Montenegro for $3.5M 02:17 | How'd you become friends? 03:05 | What sets Triton Poker apart? 05:20 | Winning a WSOP bracelet 06:45 | Favorite poker players 08:15 | How has Triton impacted Asia-Pacific poker? 09:55 | WSOP in Asia-Pacific region? 10:48 | Peak Humanity Charity Event 13:15 | Upcoming Triton Events

This commercial airline pilot has a second career leaves passengers smiling after they land. Happy hour at one assisted living facility was on the rocks until this octogenarian stepped in. As CNN Heroes celebrates 20 years, we revisit a 2012 Hero who turned sports into a path to recovery. The winners of the “world coolest marathon” share what it takes to run at the top of the globe. Plus, one psychologist explains why making fewer decisions might lead to a happier life.  Host/Producer: Krista Bo Polanco  Producer: Eryn Mathewson, Leying Tang   Senior Producer: Felicia Patinkin  Editorial Support: Jackson Loo, Christie O'Reilly, James Mazzullo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you can afford it and love what we do, please consider supporting our show by becoming a BTT Podcast Patreon Member! Also, purchase a BTT Podcast t-shirt or two from our Pro Wrestling Tees Store!  This week's Time Stamps for our WCW Saturday Night on TBS recap from Oct 8, 1994 review are as follows (NOTE: This was recorded 7/15/2026):   HOW TO GIVE OR GIFT A PATREON MEMBERSHIP: https://www.patreon.com/BookingTheTerritory/gift   Opening Shenanigans! Take the hype button to pound town! And we're the #2 rassling pod on the planet! ( 0:01:41 )  The Ask Doc episodes are falling out of the sky on Patreon! Become a Patron now right here https://www.patreon.com/BookingTheTerritory ( 0:04:15 )  How many boxes of partially eaten cereal does Doc's kids have in his pantry? It was a crime against humanity. ( 0:06:26 ) And the Randy episode is also on Patreon so don't miss it! https://www.patreon.com/BookingTheTerritory ( 0:10:43 )  Dodgers are heels and MLB propaganda? ( 0:11:55 ) The Ask Doc/Music episode is coming to Patreon too! https://www.patreon.com/BookingTheTerritory ( 0:15:11 )  5-Star Review Shoutouts! Submit a 5-star review and you'll get a shoutout on air.   WCW Saturday Night on TBS Oct 8, 1994 recap! ( 0:20:12 ) Harper with another Mark and Randy story. ( 0:24:27 ) WCW Saturday Night on TBS Oct 8, 1994 recap continues. ( 0:27:08 ) STOP TALKING ABOUT THE WOMEN IN THE CROWD! And being a womens clothing expert ( 0:31:53 ) WCW Saturday Night on TBS Oct 8, 1994 recap continues. ( 0:35:32 ) The Hills Have Eyes - Honky Mania? ( 0:36:46 ) WCW Saturday Night on TBS Oct 8, 1994 recap continues. ( 0:39:52 ) Old people trying to figure out technology and apps and "physical media" going away. ( 0:44:10 ) Dman's advice on why you don't want a woman that's a 2 out of 10. ( 0:48:50 ) WCW Saturday Night on TBS Oct 8, 1994 recap continues. ( 0:53:25 ) Mean Gene interviews Bollea Parents from their home along with Bollea. ( 1:00:21 ) Main Event Time: Duggan/Badd vs Regal/Austin. ( 1:11:01 ) If Regal got upset at Duggan and they went at it, who wins. ( 1:18:47 ) How much Tang is this guy with the Salmon dress shirt getting and what's he drive? ( 1:19:55 ) WCW Saturday Night on TBS Oct 8, 1994 recap continues. ( 1:24:45 ) Who gets the Rolex and/or Toot Toot award? And become a BTT Patreon member! Don't forget to become a BTT Patreon member at https://www.patreon.com/BookingTheTerritory ( 1:29:38 ) Harper lays out what it will take to do Ask Harper segments on the main show! Paypal him $5 per question. Harper's PayPal is, get your pen and paper out, cc30388cc@yahoo.com . Then email Harper ( ChrisHarper16Wildkat@gmail.com ) and Mike ( BookingTheTerritory@gmail.com ) letting them know you submitted $5 to Harper's paypal and he will answer your question on an upcoming show.  Information on Harper's Video Shoutout, Life and Relationship.  1. First things first, email Harper with the details of what you want in your video shoutout or who the shoutout is too. His email address is ChrisHarper16Wildkat@gmail.com . Also in that email tell him what your paypal address is. 2. Paypal him $20. Harper's PayPal is, get your pen and paper out, cc30388cc@yahoo.com .  3. Harper will then send you the video to the email address that you emailed him from requesting your video shoutout. That's it! Don't email the show email address. Email Harper. If you missed any of those directions, hit rewind and listen again.

Dưới ánh mặt trời chói chang miền nam nước Pháp, đang diễn ra liên hoan nghệ thuật biểu diễn quốc tế Avignon ( 04-25/07/2026 ). Bên cạnh chương trình Festival In, với khoảng 50 vở diễn, là Festival Off, với hơn 1.700 buổi diễn năm nay. Vẻ đẹp và sự phong phú của tại Festival Off Avignon quả là một thách thức lớn với giới truyền thông. Điều gì đã làm nên sức quyến rũ đặc biệt của Liên hoan Avignon Off, vừa tròn 60 tuổi, thường được coi là một trong những Festival sân khấu độc lập lớn nhất thế giới ? *** Julie : Khi Avignon làm thay đổi một cuộc đời Chúng tôi may mắn được làm quen với Julie, người đã 7, 8 năm liên tục có mặt tại Liên hoan Avignon. Những năm đầu tiên, Julie đến Avignon với tư cách là khán giả và hoàn toàn chỉ đến để coi các vở diễn của Festival Off. Avignon đã quyến rũ cô đến nỗi mà cách nay hai năm Julie quyết định từ bỏ một công việc lương cao để dấn thân vì nghệ thuật. Cô tâm sự : « Với tư cách là một khán giả, tôi đã xem rất nhiều vở kịch trong đời và thấy thật tuyệt vời khi chứng kiến sự đa dạng, tài năng và các sáng tạo được trình diễn dồn dập trong một tháng tại Liên hoan Avignon. Tôi muốn tham gia vào sự sôi động này, hợp tác với các nghệ sĩ, quảng bá tác phẩm của họ. Vì trước đây tôi từng là kỹ sư kinh doanh (ingénieur d'affaires), tôi thấy rằng khả năng tốt nhất của mình là giao tiếp và đàm phán. Vì vậy, với sở trường của mình, tôi quyết định chuyển hướng để hỗ trợ các đoàn kịch. » ACME Production, nơi Julie làm việc, là công ty chuyên hỗ trợ phát triển và quảng bá các sáng tác sân khấu, được sáng lập bởi diễn viên, tác giả, đạo diễn kịch tài ba Alexis Michalik, một người trưởng thành từ chính Liên hoan Off Avignon. Alexis Michalik – nhiều lần đoạt giải Molière - nổi tiếng với vở Edmond, thu hút hơn một triệu khán giả với khoảng 2.000 lượt trình diễn. Năm nay, công ty ACME Production hỗ trợ quảng bá 9 tác phẩm sân khấu tại Liên hoan Off Avignon, trong đó có vở Où vont les larmes quand elles sèchent ? (tạm dịch là Nước mắt ở đâu khi người ta không thể khóc ?), chuyển thể từ cuốn tiểu thuyết best-seller cùng tên của nhà văn Pháp Baptiste Beaulieu, cũng là một bác sĩ, nơi trang viết và cuộc đời đập cùng một nhịp. Olympe: Nhà nữ quyền tiên phong và thời kỳ đen tối trong Cách mạng Où vont les larmes quand elles sèchent ? của nhà văn - bác sĩ Baptiste Beaulieu gây nhiều xúc động với Julie, nhưng tác phẩm gây chấn động mạnh nhất với cô tại Festival năm nay có lẽ là vở Olympe : « Tôi đã xem một vở kịch tên là Olympe, kể về Olympe de Gouges, một phụ nữ tuyệt vời trong thời kỳ Cách mạng Pháp. Bà đã đấu tranh khi bản Tuyên ngôn Nhân quyền và Dân quyền chỉ đề cập đến nam giới, loại bỏ quyền của phụ nữ. Đó là thời kỳ mà Quốc Hội cấm phụ nữ tụ tập, tham gia các cuộc họp chính trị. Thật vô cùng phi lý khi bà không bao giờ được nhắc đến trong sách giáo khoa (*). Tôi rất xúc động khi khám phá nhân vật này qua tác phẩm của Raphaël Arditti, vở diễn kết hợp rất sáng tạo giữa kịch bản và âm nhạc. Tác phẩm gây xúc động rất mạnh vì đó cũng là một con người có thực ». (*) Cho đến cách nay hơn mười năm, « Các sách giáo khoa đề cập đến vấn đề quyền bầu cử của phụ nữ thường chỉ dành một phần phụ lục để trình bày tiểu sử của Jeanne Deroin hoặc Olympe de Gouges (...). Điều này góp phần đẩy họ ra bên lề. » (Bài về Vị trí của phụ nữ trong sách giáo khoa, theo Đài Quan sát về tình trạng bất bình đẳng – Observatoire des inégalités - 2013). Cơ hội lớn được trao đổi, được lắng nghe Được trao đổi dễ dàng các cảm nhận về tác phẩm sân khấu với khán giả, với diễn viên, đạo diễn, là điều « đọng lại sâu đậm nhất » với Julie trong những dịp Liên hoan Off:   « Có thể tôi cực kỳ yêu thích một tác phẩm nào đó trong khi người khác lại có cảm nhận trái chiều, hoặc chưa thực sự được thuyết phục. Ngược lại, có những tác phẩm tuy không khiến tôi xúc động nhiều, nhưng lại lay động sâu sắc tâm hồn người khác. Nhưng thực sự là, chính những trao đổi ấy - sự gặp gỡ được tạo ra từ đó, về những điểm khác biệt hay về những gì đồng cảm - mới là điều đọng lại sâu đậm nhất trong tôi, bởi suy cho cùng, liên hoan là sự kết hợp đa dạng của vô vàn sáng tạo và tác phẩm khác nhau, từ những tác phẩm mang tính chính trị, hài hước, đến những vở nhạc kịch. (…) Sau buổi diễn, bạn có thể đợi để trò chuyện với đạo diễn hoặc diễn viên. Nghệ sĩ giải thích quan điểm của mình, thể hiện điều họ muốn, trao đổi về quá trình sáng tạo, động lực của họ và cách họ thực hiện tác phẩm. Tôi rất thích điều này ở Festival Off.  »   Tang tóc, sự trào lộng và những dòng thư gởi người thân đã khuất Festival Avignon không chỉ là một cơ hội lớn cho những trao đổi với khán giả, với giới nghệ sĩ, mà còn là nơi thể nghiệm những hình thức sáng tạo mới khi đời thường, đời thực ùa vào sân khấu. Tại quảng trường Saint Didier, trước cửa quán cà phê xưa nhất thành phố Le Grand Cafe Baretta, dưới bóng cây Judée rợp mát trong ngày hè oi ả, chúng tôi may mắn gặp được Nathalie Lovighi, diễn viên trong « Meurt de Rire » (Cười đến chết), vở diễn có một vai duy nhất. « Meurt de Rire » là câu chuyện về Francine, một người phụ nữ bình thường có tấm lòng nhân hậu. Francine nhận được cuộc gọi từ Catherine, người bạn vừa mất cha. Từng trải qua mất mát, Francine đến với Catherine, cùng bạn vượt qua nỗi đau. Câu chuyện xoay quanh chủ đề cái chết, nhưng đan xen là những nụ cười tinh tế. Trong vở kịch có những khoảnh khắc lắng đọng, khi khán giả được mời suy ngẫm về những người đã khuất khi đọc những lá thư của khách qua đường gởi người thân qua đời. Nữ diễn viên Nathalie Lovighi kể : « Có một khoảnh khắc tôi hỏi khán giả : ‘‘Vậy, bạn nhận được lá thư nào?'', vì trên những chiếc ghế (trong rạp hát) có đặt sẵn các lá thư. ‘‘Ồ, một lá thư gửi mẹ''. ‘‘Bạn có thể đọc giúp tôi được không?''.  Thế là họ đọc những lá thư ấy — ‘‘Thư gửi Jeannot'', ‘‘Thư gửi bà Lulu''…. Thực ra, đây là những lá thư do những người qua đường ngẫu nhiên viết cho một người thân đã khuất, và để lại chỗ tôi. Đó là những lá thư có thật. Khoảnh khắc đó luôn rất xúc động, vì nó khiến mọi người suy ngẫm về cái chết và về những người không còn ở bên ta nữa. Tôi hỏi họ: ‘‘Tại sao chúng ta cứ phải đợi đến khi người thân ta qua đời mới nói lời yêu thương?'', ai cũng gật gù: ‘‘Đúng vậy, quả đúng là như thế''. Việc này thật hay, nó khơi gợi suy nghĩ. Đó là một khoảnh khắc tinh tế trong chương trình. Phần này rất ngắn thôi, chỉ kéo dài vài phút. Sau đó, chúng tôi trở lại ngay với câu chuyện của Francine và cô bạn Catherine, và tiếng cười lại rộn rã cho đến tận phút cuối ». Vở « Meurt de Rire » đến với Avignon, của đôi bạn Myriam Donasis và Nathalie Lovighi, được tòa thị chính thành phố cảng Le Havre, miền tây bắc nước Pháp, hỗ trợ. « Nos Assemblées » : Bánh pizza và trải nghiệm xây dựng dân chủ Tại Festival Off Avignon, không gì ngăn cách nghệ thuật và đời thường. Vở « Nos Assemblées » (Các Hội đồng của chúng ta), do Élise Chatauret đạo diễn, là một trong những tác phẩm nối kết mật thiết nghệ thuật với cuộc sống. Nos Assemblées là một trong 6 vở diễn, trong số hơn 200 vở dự thi, được vùng Ile-de-France tuyển chọn để đại diện cho vùng tham gia Liên hoan Avignon. Trả lời nhà báo Muriel Maalouf, chuyên về mảng văn hóa của đài RFI, đạo diễn vở Nos Assemblées chia sẻ : « Mọi chuyện bắt đầu từ lời mời của Nhà hát Théâtre de la Poudrerie ở Sevran, đề nghị chúng tôi dàn dựng một vở có thể trình diễn ngay tại nhà của người dân — đặc biệt là dành cho những khán giả hiếm khi đến nhà hát. Xuất phát từ ý tưởng đó, chúng tôi nhận ra rằng chủ đề mình mong muốn mang đến với mọi người — nhất là những ai không xem kịch hay không lui tới các thiết chế văn hóa — chính là chính trị. Cụ thể hơn, chúng tôi muốn khơi dậy trở lại mối quan tâm đối với chính trị, chúng tôi nhận thấy rằng công chúng đã mất niềm tin và không còn muốn tham gia vào lĩnh vực này nữa, vì họ cảm thấy nó chẳng liên quan gì đến bản thân. » Để đưa được sân khấu đến với mọi nhà, đáp ứng được nhu cầu của đông đảo, nhà đạo diễn tìm đến học hỏi từ chính người dân. Kinh nghiệm dân chủ tự quản của một nhóm công dân mang tên « L'Oseille Sauvage » (Cây Chút chít), ở một vùng thôn hẻo lánh, thu nhập rất bấp bênh, đã mang lại nhiều cảm hứng cho người sáng tác.   « … Nhóm của chúng ta có đồng ý làm một chiếc bánh pizza có phần ‘‘đế bánh'' không? Có ai phản đối không? Không ! (tiếng cười rộ lên) Đề xuất được chấp thuận ! Có người đề xuất dùng sốt cà chua. Có ai phản đối việc dùng sốt cà chua cho chiếc bánh pizza của chúng ta không? Không ! Đề xuất được chấp thuận… ». Trên đây là một đoạn hội thoại trong vở « Nos Assemblées », trình diễn tại Théâtre du Train Bleu. Nos Assemblées là một vở diễn khơi dậy khát vọng thực hành dân chủ, mà khán giả nhập cuộc cùng các diễn viên. Đạo diễn Élise Chatauret chia sẻ : "Chúng tôi bỏ phiếu chọn phần đế bánh, nước sốt và các loại nhân. Đôi khi xảy ra bế tắc: người thì muốn có thịt, người lại không. Nhưng cũng giống như trong một nền dân chủ thực thụ, bạn phải biết lắng nghe, thương lượng, để tìm ra giải pháp."  Hành động « nổi loạn » của André Benedetto : Thời khắc khai sinh Festival Off Nhiều người tin rằng Festival In là Liên hoan chính thức và Liên hoan Off là không chính thức - hay các hoạt động bổ trợ, bên lề của Liên hoan chính thức. Trên thực tế, Festival Off Avignon là một liên hoan sân khấu độc lập, có tổ chức riêng, có lịch sử riêng. Tại Avignon vào dịp Festival Off tròn 60 tuổi, nhiều người ắt hẳn rất nhớ về hành động « nổi loạn » năm nào của diễn viên, nhà soạn kịch André Benedetto, thường được coi là thời khắc khai sinh Festival độc lập Avignon. Vở kịch « Statues » (Những bức tượng) của ông, từng bị nguyền rủa, vì diễn ra ngoài khuôn khổ Festival chính thức năm 1966. 1966 cũng là năm mà André Benedetto tung ra bản Tuyên ngôn, lên án nền sân khấu thời bấy giờ như « một thứ không khí độc hại, phương tiện chọc cười, làm tê liệt và ngạt thở... Chỉ đóng vai trò như một món đồ uống giúp ngon miệng, một liều thuốc tẩy, thuốc an thần... Ru ngủ lương tri... Bứt nốt những sợi dây tinh thần cách mạng cuối cùng trong trái tim người công dân, mà bằng cách nào đó vẫn còn sót lại sau sự bào mòn tư duy của hệ thống giáo dục.... » ( « Avignon, 1966 : avec la danse, une double déflagration dans la Cité », Le Monde) ». Tuyên ngôn của người mở đường cho Festival Off được ghi nhận đã « gây chấn động mạnh », phá vỡ nhiều húy kị, mở đường cho các đột phá nghệ thuật. Tinh thần Avignon thao thức cùng xã hội  Liên hoan Off và Liên hoan In từ chỗ là đối thủ đã ngày càng hướng đến hợp tác. Đạo diễn, diễn viên Olivier Py, giám đốc Liên hoan Avignon In, từ 2014 đến 2022, từng khởi nghiệp tại thành phố của các Giáo hoàng trong khuôn khổ Festival Off. Olivier Py đã đóng vai trò lớn để « Off » và « In » xích lại gần nhau. Năm 2023, Festival In và Hiệp hội Avignon Festival & Compagnies (AF&C), cơ sở phụ trách tổ chức Festival Off, thiết lập quan hệ đối tác chính thức, thừa nhận « hai Festival, nhưng cùng một công chúng ». Hai Festival khai mạc và kết thúc cùng ngày.  Festival Avignon Off không chỉ là một hội chợ sân khấu sôi động, mà còn là nơi mà nghệ sĩ và khán giả có nhiều cơ hội giao lưu, lắng tâm, trò chuyện. Nơi nghệ thuật chữa lành, kết nối lòng người và khơi gợi suy tư. Nơi khán giả khóc khi đọc thư của một người xa lạ gửi đến người thân đã mất (« Meurt de Rire »). Nơi một nhà nữ quyền bị quên lãng được hồi sinh (« Olympe »). Nơi chiếc bánh pizza trở thành biểu tượng cho một nền dân chủ cần được tái tạo (« Nos Assemblées »). Nơi cuộc sống đương đại ùa vào sân khấu. Nơi ươm mầm cho những niềm tin vào một tương lai.

Dưới ánh mặt trời chói chang miền nam nước Pháp, đang diễn ra liên hoan nghệ thuật biểu diễn quốc tế Avignon ( 04-25/07/2026 ). Bên cạnh chương trình Festival In, với khoảng 50 vở diễn, là Festival Off, với hơn 1.700 buổi diễn năm nay. Vẻ đẹp và sự phong phú của tại Festival Off Avignon quả là một thách thức lớn với giới truyền thông. Điều gì đã làm nên sức quyến rũ đặc biệt của Liên hoan Avignon Off, vừa tròn 60 tuổi, thường được coi là một trong những Festival sân khấu độc lập lớn nhất thế giới ? *** Julie : Khi Avignon làm thay đổi một cuộc đời Chúng tôi may mắn được làm quen với Julie, người đã 7, 8 năm liên tục có mặt tại Liên hoan Avignon. Những năm đầu tiên, Julie đến Avignon với tư cách là khán giả và hoàn toàn chỉ đến để coi các vở diễn của Festival Off. Avignon đã quyến rũ cô đến nỗi mà cách nay hai năm Julie quyết định từ bỏ một công việc lương cao để dấn thân vì nghệ thuật. Cô tâm sự : « Với tư cách là một khán giả, tôi đã xem rất nhiều vở kịch trong đời và thấy thật tuyệt vời khi chứng kiến sự đa dạng, tài năng và các sáng tạo được trình diễn dồn dập trong một tháng tại Liên hoan Avignon. Tôi muốn tham gia vào sự sôi động này, hợp tác với các nghệ sĩ, quảng bá tác phẩm của họ. Vì trước đây tôi từng là kỹ sư kinh doanh (ingénieur d'affaires), tôi thấy rằng khả năng tốt nhất của mình là giao tiếp và đàm phán. Vì vậy, với sở trường của mình, tôi quyết định chuyển hướng để hỗ trợ các đoàn kịch. » ACME Production, nơi Julie làm việc, là công ty chuyên hỗ trợ phát triển và quảng bá các sáng tác sân khấu, được sáng lập bởi diễn viên, tác giả, đạo diễn kịch tài ba Alexis Michalik, một người trưởng thành từ chính Liên hoan Off Avignon. Alexis Michalik – nhiều lần đoạt giải Molière - nổi tiếng với vở Edmond, thu hút hơn một triệu khán giả với khoảng 2.000 lượt trình diễn. Năm nay, công ty ACME Production hỗ trợ quảng bá 9 tác phẩm sân khấu tại Liên hoan Off Avignon, trong đó có vở Où vont les larmes quand elles sèchent ? (tạm dịch là Nước mắt ở đâu khi người ta không thể khóc ?), chuyển thể từ cuốn tiểu thuyết best-seller cùng tên của nhà văn Pháp Baptiste Beaulieu, cũng là một bác sĩ, nơi trang viết và cuộc đời đập cùng một nhịp. Olympe: Nhà nữ quyền tiên phong và thời kỳ đen tối trong Cách mạng Où vont les larmes quand elles sèchent ? của nhà văn - bác sĩ Baptiste Beaulieu gây nhiều xúc động với Julie, nhưng tác phẩm gây chấn động mạnh nhất với cô tại Festival năm nay có lẽ là vở Olympe : « Tôi đã xem một vở kịch tên là Olympe, kể về Olympe de Gouges, một phụ nữ tuyệt vời trong thời kỳ Cách mạng Pháp. Bà đã đấu tranh khi bản Tuyên ngôn Nhân quyền và Dân quyền chỉ đề cập đến nam giới, loại bỏ quyền của phụ nữ. Đó là thời kỳ mà Quốc Hội cấm phụ nữ tụ tập, tham gia các cuộc họp chính trị. Thật vô cùng phi lý khi bà không bao giờ được nhắc đến trong sách giáo khoa (*). Tôi rất xúc động khi khám phá nhân vật này qua tác phẩm của Raphaël Arditti, vở diễn kết hợp rất sáng tạo giữa kịch bản và âm nhạc. Tác phẩm gây xúc động rất mạnh vì đó cũng là một con người có thực ». (*) Cho đến cách nay hơn mười năm, « Các sách giáo khoa đề cập đến vấn đề quyền bầu cử của phụ nữ thường chỉ dành một phần phụ lục để trình bày tiểu sử của Jeanne Deroin hoặc Olympe de Gouges (...). Điều này góp phần đẩy họ ra bên lề. » (Bài về Vị trí của phụ nữ trong sách giáo khoa, theo Đài Quan sát về tình trạng bất bình đẳng – Observatoire des inégalités - 2013). Cơ hội lớn được trao đổi, được lắng nghe Được trao đổi dễ dàng các cảm nhận về tác phẩm sân khấu với khán giả, với diễn viên, đạo diễn, là điều « đọng lại sâu đậm nhất » với Julie trong những dịp Liên hoan Off:   « Có thể tôi cực kỳ yêu thích một tác phẩm nào đó trong khi người khác lại có cảm nhận trái chiều, hoặc chưa thực sự được thuyết phục. Ngược lại, có những tác phẩm tuy không khiến tôi xúc động nhiều, nhưng lại lay động sâu sắc tâm hồn người khác. Nhưng thực sự là, chính những trao đổi ấy - sự gặp gỡ được tạo ra từ đó, về những điểm khác biệt hay về những gì đồng cảm - mới là điều đọng lại sâu đậm nhất trong tôi, bởi suy cho cùng, liên hoan là sự kết hợp đa dạng của vô vàn sáng tạo và tác phẩm khác nhau, từ những tác phẩm mang tính chính trị, hài hước, đến những vở nhạc kịch. (…) Sau buổi diễn, bạn có thể đợi để trò chuyện với đạo diễn hoặc diễn viên. Nghệ sĩ giải thích quan điểm của mình, thể hiện điều họ muốn, trao đổi về quá trình sáng tạo, động lực của họ và cách họ thực hiện tác phẩm. Tôi rất thích điều này ở Festival Off.  »   Tang tóc, sự trào lộng và những dòng thư gởi người thân đã khuất Festival Avignon không chỉ là một cơ hội lớn cho những trao đổi với khán giả, với giới nghệ sĩ, mà còn là nơi thể nghiệm những hình thức sáng tạo mới khi đời thường, đời thực ùa vào sân khấu. Tại quảng trường Saint Didier, trước cửa quán cà phê xưa nhất thành phố Le Grand Cafe Baretta, dưới bóng cây Judée rợp mát trong ngày hè oi ả, chúng tôi may mắn gặp được Nathalie Lovighi, diễn viên trong « Meurt de Rire » (Cười đến chết), vở diễn có một vai duy nhất. « Meurt de Rire » là câu chuyện về Francine, một người phụ nữ bình thường có tấm lòng nhân hậu. Francine nhận được cuộc gọi từ Catherine, người bạn vừa mất cha. Từng trải qua mất mát, Francine đến với Catherine, cùng bạn vượt qua nỗi đau. Câu chuyện xoay quanh chủ đề cái chết, nhưng đan xen là những nụ cười tinh tế. Trong vở kịch có những khoảnh khắc lắng đọng, khi khán giả được mời suy ngẫm về những người đã khuất khi đọc những lá thư của khách qua đường gởi người thân qua đời. Nữ diễn viên Nathalie Lovighi kể : « Có một khoảnh khắc tôi hỏi khán giả : ‘‘Vậy, bạn nhận được lá thư nào?'', vì trên những chiếc ghế (trong rạp hát) có đặt sẵn các lá thư. ‘‘Ồ, một lá thư gửi mẹ''. ‘‘Bạn có thể đọc giúp tôi được không?''.  Thế là họ đọc những lá thư ấy — ‘‘Thư gửi Jeannot'', ‘‘Thư gửi bà Lulu''…. Thực ra, đây là những lá thư do những người qua đường ngẫu nhiên viết cho một người thân đã khuất, và để lại chỗ tôi. Đó là những lá thư có thật. Khoảnh khắc đó luôn rất xúc động, vì nó khiến mọi người suy ngẫm về cái chết và về những người không còn ở bên ta nữa. Tôi hỏi họ: ‘‘Tại sao chúng ta cứ phải đợi đến khi người thân ta qua đời mới nói lời yêu thương?'', ai cũng gật gù: ‘‘Đúng vậy, quả đúng là như thế''. Việc này thật hay, nó khơi gợi suy nghĩ. Đó là một khoảnh khắc tinh tế trong chương trình. Phần này rất ngắn thôi, chỉ kéo dài vài phút. Sau đó, chúng tôi trở lại ngay với câu chuyện của Francine và cô bạn Catherine, và tiếng cười lại rộn rã cho đến tận phút cuối ». Vở « Meurt de Rire » đến với Avignon, của đôi bạn Myriam Donasis và Nathalie Lovighi, được tòa thị chính thành phố cảng Le Havre, miền tây bắc nước Pháp, hỗ trợ. « Nos Assemblées » : Bánh pizza và trải nghiệm xây dựng dân chủ Tại Festival Off Avignon, không gì ngăn cách nghệ thuật và đời thường. Vở « Nos Assemblées » (Các Hội đồng của chúng ta), do Élise Chatauret đạo diễn, là một trong những tác phẩm nối kết mật thiết nghệ thuật với cuộc sống. Nos Assemblées là một trong 6 vở diễn, trong số hơn 200 vở dự thi, được vùng Ile-de-France tuyển chọn để đại diện cho vùng tham gia Liên hoan Avignon. Trả lời nhà báo Muriel Maalouf, chuyên về mảng văn hóa của đài RFI, đạo diễn vở Nos Assemblées chia sẻ : « Mọi chuyện bắt đầu từ lời mời của Nhà hát Théâtre de la Poudrerie ở Sevran, đề nghị chúng tôi dàn dựng một vở có thể trình diễn ngay tại nhà của người dân — đặc biệt là dành cho những khán giả hiếm khi đến nhà hát. Xuất phát từ ý tưởng đó, chúng tôi nhận ra rằng chủ đề mình mong muốn mang đến với mọi người — nhất là những ai không xem kịch hay không lui tới các thiết chế văn hóa — chính là chính trị. Cụ thể hơn, chúng tôi muốn khơi dậy trở lại mối quan tâm đối với chính trị, chúng tôi nhận thấy rằng công chúng đã mất niềm tin và không còn muốn tham gia vào lĩnh vực này nữa, vì họ cảm thấy nó chẳng liên quan gì đến bản thân. » Để đưa được sân khấu đến với mọi nhà, đáp ứng được nhu cầu của đông đảo, nhà đạo diễn tìm đến học hỏi từ chính người dân. Kinh nghiệm dân chủ tự quản của một nhóm công dân mang tên « L'Oseille Sauvage » (Cây Chút chít), ở một vùng thôn hẻo lánh, thu nhập rất bấp bênh, đã mang lại nhiều cảm hứng cho người sáng tác.   « … Nhóm của chúng ta có đồng ý làm một chiếc bánh pizza có phần ‘‘đế bánh'' không? Có ai phản đối không? Không ! (tiếng cười rộ lên) Đề xuất được chấp thuận ! Có người đề xuất dùng sốt cà chua. Có ai phản đối việc dùng sốt cà chua cho chiếc bánh pizza của chúng ta không? Không ! Đề xuất được chấp thuận… ». Trên đây là một đoạn hội thoại trong vở « Nos Assemblées », trình diễn tại Théâtre du Train Bleu. Nos Assemblées là một vở diễn khơi dậy khát vọng thực hành dân chủ, mà khán giả nhập cuộc cùng các diễn viên. Đạo diễn Élise Chatauret chia sẻ : "Chúng tôi bỏ phiếu chọn phần đế bánh, nước sốt và các loại nhân. Đôi khi xảy ra bế tắc: người thì muốn có thịt, người lại không. Nhưng cũng giống như trong một nền dân chủ thực thụ, bạn phải biết lắng nghe, thương lượng, để tìm ra giải pháp."  Hành động « nổi loạn » của André Benedetto : Thời khắc khai sinh Festival Off Nhiều người tin rằng Festival In là Liên hoan chính thức và Liên hoan Off là không chính thức - hay các hoạt động bổ trợ, bên lề của Liên hoan chính thức. Trên thực tế, Festival Off Avignon là một liên hoan sân khấu độc lập, có tổ chức riêng, có lịch sử riêng. Tại Avignon vào dịp Festival Off tròn 60 tuổi, nhiều người ắt hẳn rất nhớ về hành động « nổi loạn » năm nào của diễn viên, nhà soạn kịch André Benedetto, thường được coi là thời khắc khai sinh Festival độc lập Avignon. Vở kịch « Statues » (Những bức tượng) của ông, từng bị nguyền rủa, vì diễn ra ngoài khuôn khổ Festival chính thức năm 1966. 1966 cũng là năm mà André Benedetto tung ra bản Tuyên ngôn, lên án nền sân khấu thời bấy giờ như « một thứ không khí độc hại, phương tiện chọc cười, làm tê liệt và ngạt thở... Chỉ đóng vai trò như một món đồ uống giúp ngon miệng, một liều thuốc tẩy, thuốc an thần... Ru ngủ lương tri... Bứt nốt những sợi dây tinh thần cách mạng cuối cùng trong trái tim người công dân, mà bằng cách nào đó vẫn còn sót lại sau sự bào mòn tư duy của hệ thống giáo dục.... » ( « Avignon, 1966 : avec la danse, une double déflagration dans la Cité », Le Monde) ». Tuyên ngôn của người mở đường cho Festival Off được ghi nhận đã « gây chấn động mạnh », phá vỡ nhiều húy kị, mở đường cho các đột phá nghệ thuật. Tinh thần Avignon thao thức cùng xã hội  Liên hoan Off và Liên hoan In từ chỗ là đối thủ đã ngày càng hướng đến hợp tác. Đạo diễn, diễn viên Olivier Py, giám đốc Liên hoan Avignon In, từ 2014 đến 2022, từng khởi nghiệp tại thành phố của các Giáo hoàng trong khuôn khổ Festival Off. Olivier Py đã đóng vai trò lớn để « Off » và « In » xích lại gần nhau. Năm 2023, Festival In và Hiệp hội Avignon Festival & Compagnies (AF&C), cơ sở phụ trách tổ chức Festival Off, thiết lập quan hệ đối tác chính thức, thừa nhận « hai Festival, nhưng cùng một công chúng ». Hai Festival khai mạc và kết thúc cùng ngày.  Festival Avignon Off không chỉ là một hội chợ sân khấu sôi động, mà còn là nơi mà nghệ sĩ và khán giả có nhiều cơ hội giao lưu, lắng tâm, trò chuyện. Nơi nghệ thuật chữa lành, kết nối lòng người và khơi gợi suy tư. Nơi khán giả khóc khi đọc thư của một người xa lạ gửi đến người thân đã mất (« Meurt de Rire »). Nơi một nhà nữ quyền bị quên lãng được hồi sinh (« Olympe »). Nơi chiếc bánh pizza trở thành biểu tượng cho một nền dân chủ cần được tái tạo (« Nos Assemblées »). Nơi cuộc sống đương đại ùa vào sân khấu. Nơi ươm mầm cho những niềm tin vào một tương lai.

TANG.MUSIC（OST）唐鸣 - 原创纯音乐合集

DoorDash is not just a delivery company. From its inception, co-founders Andy Fang and Stanley Tang operated it as a robotics and autonomy company. Andy and Stanley join Sarah Guo to explain how autonomous tech and AI are reshaping consumer habits, commerce, and delivery. Andy and Stanley talk about the rollout of Ask DoorDash, a natural-language interface that's driving both restaurant discovery and larger grocery orders. They also discuss Dot, their in-house autonomous delivery robot that has operated in Phoenix for over two years, and how it highlights the operational and hardware challenges they have faced and solved in autonomous tech. Andy and Stanley also speak about the “first and last 100 feet problem” in autonomous delivery, why multimodal strategies are the key to success, scaling autonomy and operations, and why they believe that more Dashers, not fewer, are the future of DoorDash.  Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @stanleytang | @andyfang | @DoorDash Chapters: 00:00 – Andy Fang and Stanley Tang Introduction 00:34 – Agentic Commerce and Behavioral Changes 03:52 – Next Steps for Ask DoorDash 06:54 – Investing in Robotics and Autonomy 16:31 – Building Autonomous Tech in the Physical World 21:20 – Dot: DoorDash's Autonomous Delivery Robot 22:08 – Collecting Realistic Data 25:48 – Why Work at DoorDash 28:04 – Challenges in Scaling Up Autonomy 39:30 – Productivity Benchmarks 44:56 – Future of Agentic Commerce 49:10 – Conclusion

This episode we are taking a quick break from our overall story of Uno no Sarara (aka Jito Tenno) and we are focusing on Ise Shrine and Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess. There is a lot, for a bit more, check out our podcast blogpost at:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-153   Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 153:  Ise and the Sun Goddess.   In the newly built hall of the Fujiwara Palace, the nobles of the court were gathered for a grand banquet.  Snow-white walls were off-set by bright crimson pillars and trim, highlighted by bright green windows.   The nobles themselves were a rainbow of colors, arranged as they were by rank.   At the head of it all, on a dais, sat the Queen herself, Uno no Sarara.  However, the attention was no longer on her.  Instead, it was on another figure, standing in front of the assembled audience.  A quiet spread throughout the hall, the court listening as Hieda no Are began to tell the story of the Sun Goddess in the Plain of High Heaven.  They listened to the story of her and Susano'o, and of the backward flayed horse.  They heard the tale of the Heavenly Rock Cave, and of all that came after, including the sending of the August Grandchild, Ninigi.  They listened to the story—the story of Yamato.   Last episode, we talked in more detail about Uno No Sarara—starting from her early years as the daughter of Naka no Ohoe, granddaughter of Soga no Kurayamada, and child-bride to her uncle, Ohoama.  I'll admit we didn't look too hard at that last bit, and I don't have enough information to confirm what exactly "marriage" entailed in that context, but it is still something that I find tremendously creepy and, unfortunately, anything but unique.  So I'm not going to dive too much further into it right now but… ew. We talked about how she gave birth to her son, Kusakabe, in Kyushu, during the war on the continent, and how she eventually left for Yoshino with her husband when he retired from court, presumably to outsmart his court rivals, who were positioning him to be taken out.  She also is said to have played a part in the planning and execution of the resulting Jinshin no Ran, later helping her husband govern the realm.  And now, she was on the throne, overseeing the completion of many of the projects started in the reign of her husband.  This included the completion of the Kiyomihara code, the Fujiwara palace, and the support given to the institution of Ise Grand Shrine. This episode, I want to dive into that last topic: the emphasis in Uno no Sarara's reign on  Ise Shrine and its focus, the Great God, Amaterasu no Ohokami.  Although the Chronicles talk about Amaterasu as one of the founding deities of the Yamato royal line, there is plenty of evidence that this story was grafted into the tales at a later date, and that worship of Amaterasu, at least as anything more than a minor deity, likely also started relatively late.  Some have even suggested that Ise Shrine itself wasn't even built until the late 7th century.  So, all of this focus on Ise and Amaterasu appears to be part of the larger effort to structure the physical, cultural, and spiritual landscape of the new Yamato state. Last episode we mentioned how, according to the Nihon Shoki,   Ohoama turned to worship towards Ise.  Well, specifically, he worshipped Amaterasu Ohokami.  So let's take a moment and talk about what we know of the history of this Great God of Heavenly Brightness. Unfortunately, most of that history is based on what we know of the kami from works like the Nihon Shoki, the Kojiki, and the Sendai Kuji Hongi, all of which came out in the 8th century or so.  As such, it can be hard to know what things were actually like, earlier on, as opposed to what was added or removed later. Much of what I'm going to be talking about, today, I'm going to be pulling from a book written in 2017 by Mark Teeuvwen [Tayvin?] and John Breen titled "A Social History of the Ise Shrines", as well as Michael Como's work "Weaving and Binding: Immigrant Gods and Female Immortals in Ancient Japan", published in 2009, along with other sources.  In their book, Breen and Teeuwen point out that for those who do not take the events of the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki at face value, there are two primary theories for the origin of the worship of Amaterasu: an early theory and  a late theory.  The early theory places the development of the worship of Amaterasu in the 5th and 6th centuries, during the reigns of such figures as Wakatakeru no Ohokimi, aka Yuuryaku Tennou.  The Late Theory places the development in the 7th century, largely at the feet of such figures as Ohoama and Uno no Sarara herself.  We'll take a look at the evidence and see what it says. I would note that compared to the official history, both of these would be very late theories.  According to Ise Grand Shrine even today, Amaterasu arrived in Ise in the 26th year of Ikume Iribiko, aka Suinin Tennou, as stated in the Nihon Shoki, which corresponds to 4 BCE if you take the dating of the Nihon Shoki to be accurate. Of course, we've already spent plenty of time talking about the problems with the Nihon Shoki prior to the 6th century CE, as well as how the political nature of the text affected what it contained. So to kick things off, let's address the biggest question of all: why don't we believe that Amaterasu no Ohokami was always the primary deity of the pantheon of Yamato, at the very least, if not all of the Wa people of the archipelago?  After all, isn't she a sun goddess, and isn't sun worship fairly well documented among the ancient Japanese?  Just take a look at words like "Hiko" and "Hime", referring to rulers as sun man and sun woman.  Also note that early on, worship seems to have centered around places such as mountaintops, which focused worship towards the sky and the highest point.  In fact, as wet rice paddy agriculture became the dominant economic factor driving the engine of the archipelago in the Yayoi and early kofun period, early shrines were very likely about bringing the spirit of the mountain from the mountaintop and giving them a home amongst the rice fields.. And then we have the stories.  Don't the ancient stories all tell about Amaterasu as the ruler of Takama no Hara, the Heavenly Plain?  And isn't it her grandchild that then descends to the earth to pacify the Land of the Reed Plains—aka the Japanese archipelago? Well let's take a look at those same stories, which we've covered in earlier episodes of the podcast.  The first deities mentioned in the Chronicles are deities like Ama no Minaka Nushi, Lord of the August Middle of Heaven; Takami Musubi, High August Growth; and Kami Musubi, Divine August Growth.  There are other deities, like Kuni Toko Tachi, but they are barely mentioned again. Later we get Izanagi and Izanami, the masculine and feminine, who create the world and give birth to numerous deities from that point on.  Among the children of Izanagi are said to be Amaterasu, Tsukiyomi, and Susano'o.  Amaterasu, Heaven's Brightness, represents the sun while Tsukiyomi represents the dark of the moon.  Susano'o is then the god of the storms and seas, and was sent to the Nether Land, the Ne no Kuni. Right away we see that there are numerous different stories listed in the Nihon Shoki for just about everything.  Only the Kojiki gives everything as a single, coherent narrative, but surely the readers in the 8th century would have known some of these other stories, and thus the Nihon Shoki gives the alternates as well. Now the main narrative of the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki tells us that Ama-terasu no Oho-kami was born to rule over everything.  In the Nihon Shoki, Izanagi and Izanami specifically mention that divine destiny in Amaterasu's creation—although actually, in that part of the text, the deity they are creating is named Oho-hiru-me no Muchi; the Great Sun Female Holder.  And in the next entry they call Amaterasu: Ama-terasu Oho-hiru-me.  Tsukiyomi, the deity of the moon, is made to be her consort, and they are supposedly sent to rule the plain of Heaven, Takama no Hara. The problem is that there are other entries that suggest that Takama no Hara already had a ruler:  Taka-mi-Musubi.  Reading the sections on Taka-mi-Musubi, we see a deity who is said to have produced 1500 children, himself—no mention of Izanagi and Izanami.  Some of his children are mentioned as Omohi-kane:  the Thought-Combining deity, and Sukuna-bikona: the Little-Prince-Named deity. Amatsu Hiko Hiko Ho Ninigi no Mikoto, the August Heavenly Prince, Prince Ho-ninigi, is not just a grandson of Amaterasu no Ohokami, but also a grandchild of Taka-mi Musubi.  In at least one story, Takami Musubi is the one who wants Ninigi no Mikoto to become the ruler of the Central Land of the Reed Plains.  Towards that end, he gathers the various kami and chooses someone to go down and prepare the way—Ama-ho-hi no Mikoto—who was to quote-unquote "expel and subdue" the evil gods of that land.  We covered this story in episode 21 and 22.  When that doesn't work, he gathers them again, sending others to try and do the same.  Eventually he sends Takemikazuchi and Futsunushi down.  All of this sounds like Taka-mi Musubi, whose name appears to refer to being the "high" deity, was the one in charge. In addition, we have the court ritual from sources like the Engi Shiki, which illustrates the deities that were invoked for the protection of the palace and the royal family.  These were:  Kami-musubi, Takami-musubi, Iku-musubi, Taru-musubi, Tamatsume-musubi, Oomiya-no-me, Oomiketsu-no-kami and Kotoshironushi.  One might notice a lot of the "musubi" names among the deities, and a distinct lack of appeal to Amaterasu.  If Amaterasu were the central deity and ancestral deity of the royal family, why is she not invoked in the rituals of the court itself? The thought, here, is that these rituals are likely much older than the worship of Amaterasu, and while Amaterasu would come to prominence in the stories that the court would tell, it was much more difficult for them to rearrange the traditional rituals to put her front and center.  Those rituals were maintained by ritualist families like the Nakatomi, and they weren't likely to change the rituals willy-nilly, even for a sovereign.  That was playing with supernatural fire, after all—if you changed the rituals, would they still even be effective?  Granted, rituals do change, so it isn't a perfect argument; perhaps it was just not considered to be important enough to make the change since it was not something that anyone except the court ritualists needed to worry themselves over.  Either way, it appears that we do have a list of deities that may have been the deities of the ruling elite prior to the rise of Amaterasu and Ise shrine more generally. We have a few other clues of what was going on in the narrative.  For instance, we see the story from the reign of Mimaki Iribiko, aka Sujin Tennou, also called the First Sovereign of Yamato, despite the legendary figures inserted prior to his reign.  It is in this chapter that we see a note that Ama-terasu no Oho-kami and Yamato no Oho-kuni-dama, which is to say the Spirit of the Country of Yamato, were both worshipped together in the hall—that is in the royal palace itself.  And yet apparently Mimaki Iribiko feared these deities residing with him in the palace, and he had their worship moved to locations outside of the palace.  Amaterasu's worship was given to Toyosuki-iri-bime, one of Mimaki Iribiko's daughters, and established in the district of Shiki, in Yamato.  Yamato no Ohokunidama, on the other hand, was given over to Nunaki-iri-bime no Mikoto, another daughter through a different wife. but we are told that she was lean, and her hair was falling out, and so she couldn't perform the rites.  Turning our attention back to Ama-terasu—in the reign of Ikume-Iribiko, aka Suinin Tennou, son and heir of Mimaki Iribiko, the worship of Ama-terasu would pass from Mimaki Iribiko's daughter, Nunaki Iri Bime to Ikume Iribiko's daughter, Yamato Hime.  She would move the worship site from Shiki to Uda, in the shadow of Mt. Miwa, and then proceed over to the upper banks, or Kawakami, of Isuzu, in the district of Watarai.  Here, in one of the alternate stories about this episode, we get the Great God of Yamato—Ohoyamato no Ohokami—speaking through a medium to warn the sovereign that he had better be careful.  Mimaki Iribiko had not been quite thorough enough in his worship, so he had not had a long life, and if Ikume Iribiko didn't do the same, he would suffer a similar fate. And so, in a record eerily similar to what we see in the previous reign, the worship of the "Great God of Yamato", the Oho-Yamato no Oho-kami, is given to Nunaki-waka-hime—as opposed to Nunaki-Iri-bime—who also fails in the task because of her emaciated body.  This also introduces Fukayu nushi, an ancestor of the Nakatomi, who was the one who divined what should be done. There is so much to unpack in these stories.  For one, the kami bring power, but also danger.  One can try to placate the kami, but it isn't like a ritual will always work, and the story is of the sovereign being actively afraid of what they might do, so they were removed from the palace.  Then there is the fact that we see two seemingly similar names—Ohoyamato no Ohokami and Yamato no Kunidama both seem like we are talking about the same spirit of Yamato, though some would point out that one is the spirit of the country and one is the great kami of the country, so, clearly different. Both are also being given to someone named "Nunaki—something-something—Hime", and in both cases Nunaki seems to fail in her task because she is apparently not hot enough for the kami.  She's described as too thin and emaciated or balding.  We aren't given the lineage of Nunaki Waka Hime, but Nunaki Iri Bime is connected with the land of Owari.  Nunaki Iri-bime is said to be the daughter of Mimaki Iribiko and Ohoama Hime, ancestor of the Owari no Muraji.  Owari was the land that supported Ohoama during the Jinshin no Ran. Finally, in both cases, we see the worship of the spirit of Yamato being given over to someone name "Nagochi", later identified as Nagochi no Sukune, ancestor of the Yamato no Atahe. One more note—closely on the heels of moving these two kami out of the palace, we see that the court brings in the worship of Oho-mono-nushi, the god of Mt. Miwa, under Ohotataneko, the ancestor of the Miwa clan. So the stories here account for Ama-terasu being moved to Watarai and why she isn't worshipped in the palace.  It also places Oho-mono-nushi at the center of worship in Yamato.  Oho-mono-nushi and Miwa continue to dominate the narrative from here on out, with a few notable exceptions, such as with Okinaga Tarashi Hime, aka Jingu Tennou and her mythical conquest of the Korean peninsula.  I'm sure that had no political implications at all given everything that had happened with Baekje, Silla, and the Tang dynasty in the latter half of the 7th century.  Other than scenes like that, however, the Miwa clan and worship of the Miwa deity appear frequently in the narrative.  It is clear that Mt. Miwa, and its deity, were important, and when Breen and Teeuwen hypothesize that when Naka no Ohoe, which is to say Tenji Tennou, took the drastic step of moving the capital up to Ohotsu, in the land of Afumi, he also brought the Miwa deity with him.  Those Afumi court rituals were conducted under the auspices of the Nakatomi, and particularly the auspices of Nakatomi no Kane, who would become one of the chief opponents of Ohoama during the Jinshin no Ran in 672.  After that conflict, Ohoama and his wife, Uno no Sarara, were building new traditions using Ise and constructing new legends.  Legends that would be under their control and influence and which would further bolster their rule from the city that they had designed to fit inside of this newly constructed cosmological framework. And yet this also brings up what seems like an obvious question.  If Ise Shrine and the worship of Amaterasu were so central to Ohoama and Uno's plans, then why would they put it so far away?  Proponents of the "early" theory of the development of Amaterasu and Ise Shrine suggest that the answer lies in the text of the Chronicles.  That there is some truth to the idea that there was worship in Yamato and that, for various reasons, it moved out to Watarai district early on and developed into Ise Shrine.  Those who hold to the "late" theory of development see all of those stories as later inserts meant to explain away why Ise Shrine was so far away—and perhaps why Amaterasu was not included in the cool-kami club of court ritual.   Teeuwen and Breen mention a few of the theories, from Naoki Koujiro stressing Ise as a strategic gateway between Yamato and Eastern Japan to Tanaka Takashi proposing that the movement of Amaterasu to Ise is actually a stand-in for one or more military campaigns to that area to bring it under Yamato control. And before we move too much further in the narrative, let's talk about how Ise is physically and geographically situated.  Ise is part of modern Mie prefecture, on the eastern edge of the Ki peninsula.  It is at the southern end of a series of adjoining alluvial plains that follow the coastline north to the modern prefectures of Aichi and Gifu—the ancient provinces of Owari and Mino.  The capital of Ise Province used to be in Suzuka, near the the two Tsubaki shrines which both lay claim to the title of Ise no Ichinomiya, the First shrine of the land of Ise, and the pass that served as one of three major routes from eastern Japan into the Home Provinces and beyond.  This puts Ise about as far away as you can get from the capital of the province without going over the mountains, themselves.  It also puts it a good deal south of most major travel routes.  If you are going to Ise shrine then it is pretty clear you were going to Ise shrine, as there isn't a lot of evidence for anything else in the area. The Shrine itself is actually made up of two primary shrine complexes.  There is the Naiku, the inner shrine, and the Geku, or outer shrine.  The Naiku, or inner shrine, is probably the area most people think about.  It is at the foot of the mountains where the Shimamichi River joins the Isuzu River and both flow out of the mountains.  The Naiku contains the shrine to Amaterasu no Ohokami, and is famous for its layout, where there are actually two shrine enclosures, one next to the other.  The main shrine is then rebuilt in the empty enclosure every 20 years, at which point the worship is moved to the new shrine, the old shrine is torn down, and the cycle is started once again. The Outer Shrine, or Geku, is further north, and probably not as well known to foreigners.  The Geku is said to enshrine the spirit of Toyouke-bime, a kami dedicated to food.  According to the traditions of the Geku itself, Toyouke-bime was enshrined in the Geku at the command of Wakatakiru no Ohokimi, aka Yuuryaku Tennou, based on a dream. Regarding the history of why the Shrines—both Inner and Outer—are located here, archaeological evidence doesn't give us a lot to suggest that these might be the case.  Despite the presence of the Miya River near Ise Shrine, we haven't found evidence of a large harbor or port, like we might expect if it was the jumping off point for crossing Ise Bay—or even the center of another large polity.  Instead, the areas to the north—around Fujikata and Matokata inlets, for instance—show much more evidence of occupation and, presumably, use.  Heck, the modern district of Fujikata is in the town of "Tsu", which literally means "port".  And the capital area of Suzuaka and the Ichinomiya of Tsubaki Grand Shrine is even farther north, still.  So who, if anybody, was living down in the area of Ise Shrine?  If we look at the progression of tomb mounds in the area in previous centuries, we see that they start in the Matokata region in the 5th century and work their way down towards the south, with late 5th century tombs found in the district of Taki, the district bordering on Watarai and modern Ise City to the northwest.  It is also where you can find the Saikuu, the site of the old purification palace for the Shrine Princesses.  Grave goods seem to show close ties with Yamato, in the Nara basin.  While the tombs expanded to the south through the 5th century, they appear to have stopped altogether in the 6th century—or at least we haven't found any.  This may indicate that the political situation had changed and there was no group in the area that could organize the labor for such an undertaking.  Whether that was because Yamato was taking it as corvee labor or just that population had dwindled due to war, famine, or something else, I don't know that we could say. Around the year 600, at the opening of the 7th century, we do see a large grave mound erected in the core area of what would later become Ise Shrine, on the east side of the Miya River, overlooking what would become the Geku, the Outer Shrine of the Ise complex.  For those who aren't aware, Ise Grand Shrine is a large complex of shrines, and it is divided into two main areas.  The "inner shrine", or Naiku, is where most people go, and it is the site of the famous shrine building that is supposed to be rebuilt every 20 years.  The Geku is the "outer shrine" complex, technically dedicated to Toyouke hime, a kami of agriculture.  The kofun overlooking the outer shrine is known as the Takakurayama kofun.  This is a round kofun, about 35 to 40 meters in diameter, with a horizontal stone chamber.  It is the largest in the Ise region.  It has been mentioned in records going back to at least the Kamakura era, and even though most of the grave goods are gone, there is evidence that it was richly appointed.  Given its shape and location, there were even those in later centuries who connected it with the Heavenly Rock Cave in which Amaterasu hid according to the ancient stories. The fact that there was nothing around this area and suddenly we see a giant tomb mound is pretty puzzling.  Why was it built here?  Is it connected to the founding of the Outer Shrine in some way, or is that just coincidental?  Teeuwen and Breen point out that it is pretty rare for a large tomb mound to be build in the precincts of an active shrine, which suggests that whatever was happening there, that area was not part of the shrine grounds.  That said, I have to wonder if the ritual worship at the kofun might not have later been transformed or coopted into something else.  There also is no other indication that the Outer Shrine area was used for ritual purposes any earlier than the kofun would have been built.  In contrast, around the Inner Shrine area, several kilometers away, there are caches of beads dated to the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries in a small valley where a brook runs down from Mt. Asama, not too far from the current shrine complex.  Teeuwen and Breen suggest that this may relate to the "upper reaches of the Isuzu River", mentioned in the Chronicles, and that it may have had to do with rituals related to water supply—hence being found at the point where the water was coming down from the mountains.  And yet, despite these finds, there really aren't any large scale archaeological remains that have been discovered east of the Miya river, though there are modest signs of dwelling and habitation, and some minor burials mounds. Compare this to Tsubaki shrine, the home of Saruta Hiko no Kami, and the main shrine of Ise, situated in the ancient capital of Ise no Kuni.  Downstream from there are numerous tomb mounds and indications of habitation.  So this was probably the center for early sun worship in the region. Teeuwen and Breen conclude that all of this indicates that the region of Taki and areas east of the Miya river were probably more of an outpost—no major powerful chieftains or large polity had set up in the region.  In the late 6th century, some power had to move in to build Takakurayama kofun, but that was an outlier.  Maybe this area just largely fell under Yamato hegemony.  And perhaps that was the key.  Perhaps initially this wasn't a place to center power and authority, but rather it was more like a prison.  It was a place far away from the court, where a deity that was more of a threat could be kept away from the palace and the sovereign.  Perhaps Amaterasu, or whoever the kami was at the time, was placed out here because of the threat they posed, much as the Chronicle seems to suggest—just not necessarily at the time that is suggested. One of the aspects of the mythmaking that we see in the Chronicles appears to be the stress on the Amatsu kami and Kunitsu Kami—the Heavenly deities and the Earthly deities.  The Heavenly deities are those in Takama no Hara, and they are the progenitors of the royal line.  On the other hand are the earthly kami, the Kunitsu Kami, those dwelling on the earthly plane.  In the stories that were recorded in the Nihon Shoki, before the August Grandchild of Takami Musubi and Ama Terasu descended to take control of the Central Land of the Reed Plain, they sent down heavenly kami as warriors to subdue the earthly kami.  On the one hand, this may have been driven by some kind of deep memory of early conquests of the archipelago by various forces.  However, these legends also served another purpose, in that they set up the royal family's right to rule, and appear to establish a de facto hierarchy between those families descended from the Heavenly Kami and those descended from the earthly Kami. Another thing that Teeuwen and Breen point out and that is that Amaterasu is not necessarily a female deity, to start with.  In fact, Amaterasu was probably easily overlain atop the worship of Oho-mono-nushi of Mt. Miwa, at least early on.  To that point, they note stories where Oho-mono-nushi and other deities were commonly depicted as arrows, snakes, or similarly phallic imagery finding or even penetrating women who were thought to have a connection with them.   This suggests a context of these priestesses being married to the kami, and even fits in with early descriptions of individuals like the famous Queen Himiko being a spiritual leader as well as a political one.  If the original Amaterasu was conceived of as a male deity, then this could also explain the tradition of the Saigu, the consecrated shrine princess.  We only see a few royal princesses designated to the position up to this point in the narrative, and, beyond Tokosuki Iri bime and Yamato hime, we don't necessarily learn much more.  One wonders if there weren't other royal princesses likewise sent elsewhere to serve other deities.  We know about Nunaki Iri Hime, and presumably Nunaki Waka Hime.  There was also Yamato Totohi Momoso Hime, who was married to Oho-mono-nushi.  Presumably there were others who just never ended up in the stories that were passed down. The idea of a kami taking a "wife" and connecting that to the idea of women holding these priestly positions seems to fall in line with much of what we see, though, as I said, we only hear occasionally about the appointment of royal princesses to the position until the reign of Ohoama.  That's when we see specifics about appointments, the purification palace in Hase, and other arrangements.  It makes you wonder more than a little bit if Royal Princess Ohoku was, perhaps, the first royal princess to actually be appointed.  It would have been easy enough to add in previous "shrine princesses" into the lineage, especially far enough back that nobody could really fact check it.  We also see Royal Princess Taki journey to Ise with her companions, Princess Yamashiro no Hime and Lady Ishikawa. It is intriguing that this practice was temporarily interrupted during the reign of Uno no Sarara, as I mentioned last episode.  Could this have something to do with a female ruler on the throne and a corresponding lack of urgency about having a female representative at Ise? And in stories about Amaterasu, she is frequently shown with certain masculine qualities.  When she confronts her younger brother, Susano'wo, she is concerned that he might try to take her authority from her, so she meets him decked out in armor, her hair tied up in a typical male fashion, with a bow, ready for a fight.  It would be just as easy to imagine that Amaterasu and Susano'wo were brothers, contending over rulership.  Add to all of that the idea that kami were often personifications of various natural phenomena or ideas, and Japanese is not a naturally gendered language, and there are those that believe that the stories of Amaterasu were not necessarily about a female deity in the beginning, but a male deity, similar to Ohomono Nushi and others, who then took on a feminine persona.  On the other hand there are passages in the old stories recounted in the Chronicles that clearly make Amaterasu out to be a woman. To start with the activities she is associated with, such as weaving, are often associated with women as something they do in the home.  This is a tradition carried over from the continent, along with silk and the techniques to weave it.  In the lands where silk production started, there are silkworm goddesses and the gendered nature of silk production and weaving appears to have come over to Japan as well.  There is also the fact that Amaterasu is said to have another name:  Oho-hiru-me no muchi.  In this case, it would seem to mean something like Great Noontime Female Possessor.  And in the weaving hall it is sometimes Amaterasu that is weaving and sometimes Waka Hirume.  "Hirume" certainly feels like a feminine name. There is the distinct possibility that the stories of Amaterasu as recorded were actually about two or more different kami, so Amaterasu and Ohohirume could have been separate deities having to do with the sun that were rolled into a single kami.  As mentioned before, it is also possible that Amaterasu ended up with some stolen valor taken from the other Ise deity worshiped at Tsubaki, Saruta-hiko no Kami.   Teeuwen and Breen also note that the name "Amaterasu" is hardly unique, noting at least ten other shrines with a kami called "Amateru" or "Amaterasu", mostly in Yamato, but some as far away as Kyushu and Tsushima.  Nine of those shrines were dedicated to Ame no Hoakari, an ancestor deity of the Owari lineage who was also closely tied to metalworking.  It is worth remembering that it was Owari who helped support Ohoama during the Jinshin no Ran, and who may have even fostered Ohoama for a while when he was just a young prince.  All that to say there may have been several different traditions that were all contributing different elements to the story. And then there is the connection between Amaterasu and Uno no Sarara. Herman Ooms, in his book: "Imperial Politics and Sybmolics in Ancient Japan", notes the similarities between Amaterasu and Uno no Sarara, talking about the differences between the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, both of which had events that mirrored Uno no Sarara's own life.  According to Ooms, "The Kojiki's Amaterasu is a transparent double of the female tennou Jitou".  He points out that Uno no Sarara, besides her posthumous title of Jitou Tennou, also had a title making reference to Takamanohara:  Takama no Hara Hirono no Hime—the Princess High-Heaven-Plain.  But beyond that, we also see other linkages between the stories.  For instance, it isn't Amaterasu's son, Ame no Oshihomimi who is given the realm, but rather her grandchild, Ninigi.  This parallels the way that Uno no Sarara's son, Kusakabe, didn't ascend to the throne, but instead Uno no Sarara was holding the seat for his son, her grandson.  So one sees how Uno no Sarara could be seen as Amaterasu, and her grandson, Prince Karu, could be seen as Ninigi, the August grandchild.  Teeuwen and Breen also note that during this same time, we see the rise of a new institution: the Jingikan.  Again, we touched on this last episode, so just a quick recap:  The Jingikan was a government organization set up specifically to oversee the shrines, rituals, ceremonies, and other such things pertaining to the kami matters.  It does not appear in the initial stand-up of the new, bureaucratic government, wherein is created the bureaus, ministries, or departments, depending on your chosen vernacular, which make up the Dajokan, the Great Council of State.  Instead, the Jingikan is a separate organization, specifically organized around kami matters. The term "Jingi" is also a shorthand for "Ama-tsu-kami, Kuni-tsu-kami", or the kami of Heaven and the Kami of the earth.  "Ama-tsu-kami", meaning Kami of Heaven, was written with two characters meaning "Heaven" and "Kami", pronounced "Tenjin".  "Kuni-tsu-kami", or the Kami of the Earth, was written as "Earth" and "Earth Spirit", which was then pronounced "Chigi".  By taking the last character of each compound Tenjin-Chigi becomes just Jingi, for short.  Throughout the Chronicles, this term, "Jingi" is thrown around when they want to quickly note all the kami, together, though sometimes it is fully written out as "Tenjin Chigi", as well.  Interestingly, "Tenjin" or "Ama tsu Kami", sometimes appears alone, especially in the chapters on the Age of the Gods.  However, "Chigi" seems to only be used in the whole phrase.  There are a few instances, however, of "Chijin" being used, but they are few. That said, the term "Jingikan", also read as "Kami Tsukasa" or even "Kan Zukasa",  doesn't appear until 690, in the reign of Uno no Sarara.  This probably means that it was part of the reforms encompassed by the Kiyomihara codes.  The head of the Jingikan is known as the Jingihaku or "Kan-zukasa no Kami".  This term actually shows up well in advance of the Jingikan itself, initially referring to an unnamed official or officials in charge of kami worship at the court.  Nakatomi no Kamatari is said to have been offered the position in the first reign of Takara, aka Kougyoku Tennou, though the first confirmed individual appears to be Nakatomi no Ohoshima, during the reign of Uno no Sarara. This appears to be a distinctly Yamato invention in the bureaucratic system.  It leverages the language and structure of the Tang dynasty, but in its own way.  There was a Tang department of shrines, but it was described differently, as befits a different spiritual environment focused on ancestor worship and Confucian and Taoist ideas.  The Jingikan system  seems to have been a deliberate re-organization of the indigenous kami worship, incorporating what was probably traditional roles into the new bureaucratic system.  In so doing, however, it also gave the court greater control, and given that this was happening at the same time as the establishment of various stories and myths around Ise and the foundation more generally, it appears to be part of a concerted and deliberate effort to construct a new narrative. All of this points to them architecting much of what was going on, from the stories to the landscape.  Ohoama likely built the inner shrine as we know it.  If it really was an obscure, out-of-the-way shrine, perhaps that also meant that there weren't any other powerful court factions that were enhanced by it.  And then, over time, the Ise shrine and the deity there could be better incorporated into the overall myths and stories that surrounded the formation of Yamato.  A new Yamato, one that would soon enough be referring to itself as the origin of the Sun:  Nippon, a name often attributed to Ohoama and Uno no Sarara, though not found in the record of their reigns in the Chronicles. Another aspect to all of this, however, is what happened immediately after Uno no Sarara's reign, and into the 8th and early 9th centuries.  In the 8th century—the Nara period—Buddhism started to merge with a lot of the local practices.  This was not uncommon.  Buddhism had been born in a land with myriad deities and styles of worship, and it had the means to incorporate local deities into its cosmological worldview.  Kami were just other beings, stuck in the cycle of rebirth, who, as sentient beings, could equally benefit from the Buddha's teachings.  They became guardians of Buddhist institutions, and the lines between shrines and temples were often blurred.  At the same time, kami worship was also taking on various concepts from continental worship, such that even today we find a lot of what we might consider Taoist practices influencing Shinto worship. Had this continued, worship of the kami may have been completely subsumed into the Buddhist ritual practices, but there were areas where kami worship remained distinct.  One of these was at Ise. Early on, there was an attempt to build a temple at Ise, but it didn't last long.  The temple was eventually moved out of the shrine complex, and then eventually it was removed altogether.  Later writings from the Shrine would include certain Buddhist terms among the things that were taboo within the shrine grounds, considering Buddhism as something of a corrupting or polluting influence.  Shrine Princeses, during their tenure, had to devote themselves to the kami, and though they might retire as nuns, later in life, during their appointment they were to be free of any Buddhist influences.  In many ways this would make Ise a prime example of what would eventually be termed "Shinto", which gave it, and the worship of Amaterasu, a certain pride of place.  Of course, it didn't hurt that it was also intertwined with the State and the founding myths of the nation.  As such, Ise Shrine and its worship would become a template for many others to follow, helping to shape what we know as "Shinto" today. There are still a lot of questions.  We don't exactly know what Uno no Sarara did on her trip to Ise Shrine, and we don't know how things surrounding the worship at Ise and of Amaterasu herself changed in the intervening years between when these events happened and when, about two to three decades later, the Chronicles were finalized and published.  Certainly some of this seems tied to the Fujiwara capital, which was no longer populated at that point, the move to Heijo-kyo, in Nara, occurring between 708 and 710, two years before the Kojiki and a decade before the Nihon Shoki would come out.  And yet, the three sacred mountains that were incorporated into the plan of the Fujiwara Capital, Mt. Kagu, Mt. Miminashi, and Mt. Unebi, seem to continue to be important.  This is especially true of  Mt. Kagu, whose heavenly counterpart, Ame no Kaguyama—literally Heavenly Mt. Kagu— continues to play a major role in the stories surrounding Amaterasu and the Heavenly Rock Cave.  In addition,Mt. Unebi is closely tied to the story of Iware-biko, aka Jimmu, conquering and settling the land—perhaps to draw attention away from the stories about Mimaki and Ikume iribiko, aka Sujin and Suinin, who were both associated more with Mt. Mimoro, aka Mt. Miwa.  So even though the physical presence was moved, by that point we know that foundation of many of these stories were likely laid down around the time that the Fujiwara capital was in operation.  What does seem clear is that, just as there were clear efforts to set up the new State government, including the new capital, the court were also taking control of other levers of power and influence.  We previously talked about how they had created National Temples and included government positions to oversee Buddhist affairs more generally.  With Ise and the creation of the Jingikan, it appears as though that trend continued with the traditional kami worship. Many of the elite families still had connections to their own shrines, with their own kami.  Through the stories collected and written down—with a few editorial additions to help place them in an approved context—they were able to construct a narrative from separate or divergent traditions.  These traditions had already accreted to themselves various stories and culture-ways, some of them with clear links to the continent and others with overlapping portfolios.  The kami, and the ability to intercede with them for their blessings or to avert their wrath, were a form of power that was being structured for the purpose of supporting the new State.  A state now under the control of one Uno no Sarara. And we don't exactly have to wonder about this… the preface of the Kojiki all but says it.  They put the words in the mouth of Ohoama, or, as they call him, the Sovereign of the Kiyomihara Palace.  But the words are pretty clear: "I hear that the Imperial Records and Ancient Writing handed down by the various houses have come to differ from the truth and that many false hoods have been added to them. If these errors are not remedied at this time, their meaning will be lost before many years have passed. This is the framework of the state, the great foundation of the imperial influence. Therefore, recording the Imperial Records and examining the Old Writings, discarding the mistaken and establishing the true, I desire to hand them on to later generations." With that, 28 year old Hieda no Are was given the command to learn all the stories and presumably to recite them for the court.  And several decades later, Oho no Yasumaro was given the task to take Are's stories and write them down.  I imagine that Hieda no Are, or perhaps someone else who had learned the stories well enough, would be called into court or banquets to present some of the stories, or would be asked questions if there was any need for precedence.  Thus creating a single source for truth, according to the administration.  At the same time, the court had a problem.  They couldn't control all of the sources of written material, with all of the various contradictions, so we also would eventually get the more comprehensive—but also less narratively direct—Nihon Shoki as well.  After all, the game of propaganda was being played at many levels, and while the royal household had their motivations—primarily to support the legitimacy of their claim to power and the system within which that claim was validated— other families wanted to ensure that they were properly recorded as having connections to traditional nexuses of power—be that the ancient kami of Heaven or Earth, or their relationship to the royal family.  This is because precedence was important, even as new traditions were being created.  Like the way that the Mononobe and the Nakatomi played important roles in Uno no Sarara's ascension ceremony despite the actual individuals using new or different names, like Isonokami or Fujiwara.  See Episode 151 for the explanation, there.  And new traditions were much easier to justify if you could connect them with older traditions—whether those older traditions were truly ancient or newly made inventions. And all of this suggests that this was not an accident and it wasn't simply being imposed from the top down.  One could be charitable and suggest that those involved felt that this got them closest to what the truth actually was, given that they had now been inculcated in a new worldview and they were trying to view the ancient stories through the interpretive lens of that worldview.  On the other hand, they were ultimately doing it to structure power and authority that favored them and the government they had created.  A government that they hoped would outlast them, and be passed on to their descendants. Next episode, we will continue our discussion of Uno no Sarara's life and reign and the incredible steps she took to ensure that her line would continue to rule Yamato for decades. 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.

Episodio repentino de Cupertino para comentar la sorprendente y dura demanda judicial de Apple contra OpenAI. Acusan a varios antiguos empleados de Apple de conspirar para robar y robar secretos industriales. Los argumentos de Apple parecen sólidos, y podrían acabar con algunas personas en la cárcel, algún acuerdo extrajudicial entre ambas partes, e incluso afectando a la salida a bolsa de OpenAI.Este episodio ha sido editado de forma improvisada, así que pido disculpas por posibles fallos.- Apple demanda a OpenAI por robo de secretos comerciales | Tecnología- Apple sues OpenAI after ex-engineer allegedly used bug to steal trade secrets - Ars Technica- Apple chasing AI chip company deals, The Information reports - The Economic Times- Another turn in the Apple v. OpenAI dispute. | The Verge- Demanda entre Apple y OpenAI: 8 acusaciones impactantes y cómo esta batalla legal podría cambiar tu próximo iPhone | TechRadar- Filtran el primer producto de los creadores de ChatGPT: un altavoz que parece tener vida propia. Y Apple amenaza con truncarlo- The wildest allegations in Apple's trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI | TechCrunch- Se acabó la paz entre Apple y OpenAI. Una demanda histórica destapa los presuntos robos de secretos de los creadores de ChatGPT

Convoité en Angleterre après ses récentes performances à la Coupe du monde 2026, Ayyoub Bouaddi pourrait finalement rester à Lille. C'est ce que souhaite Olivier Létang, le président du LOSC, qui s'est entretenu avec son joueur. Jérôme Rothen voulait réagir à cette information. 

Mandy Tang is the author of Heal Your Career Wounds: Navigating the Trauma of Today's Workplace. A career coach and holistic healer, Mandy helps clients such as large technology companies, start-ups, and the nonprofit sector bring more creativity and joy into their work lives. Her training includes an MBA in finance from Columbia, certification as a trauma-informed yoga instructor, and completion of a three-year shamanic practitioner program.   Here she and Dawson discuss: Mandy's diverse background  Why there isn't "great" leadership and management in many companies How to get you in touch with your potential at work Overreliance on an analytical the mind and how that leads to bad decisions Listening to your own inner guidance system; disconnecting from external noise Why the best decisions are rarely linear  How we talk to ourselves and why that makes a huge difference Noticing and raising our level of vibration around work What to do if you're feeling stuck Trusting your own voice Having a creative outlet that is not tied to outcomes   Learn more about Mandy's work at: https://www.mandytang.co/   Connect with Dawson at: http://dawsongift.com/   To purchase Dawson's book, Spiritual Intelligence:  https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Intelligence-Activating-Circuits-Awakened/dp/160415294X/   #mindtomatter #blissbrain #spiritualintelligence #eft #meditation #highenergyhealth #career #leadership #worklife #healyourcareerwounds 

TANG.MUSIC（OST）唐鸣 - 原创纯音乐合集

Send us Fan MailIn this episode Jonathan Chang and Jason Robertson discuss three sources of medical ethics and reflect on how they can inform the modern clinic. Drawing first from a phrase attributed to the Tang dynasty physician Sun Simiao ( 孫思邈, 581-682 CE) then considering scrolls Dr. Wang had painted for his office walls and finally going back to concepts attributed to the mythical Warring States period physician Bian Que (扁鵲, 407-310 BC?), the conversation reveals that some clinical dilemmas are ageless.  Who to treat, what attitude to have and where to draw the line with difficult patients are all concepts that have confronted physicians in every era. For those interested in the original Chinese phrases, see below:孙思邈 - Sun Simiao  (from 備急千金要方)大醫精誠王居易- Wang Juyi (a traditional quote he kept on his clinic wall)天不言高而自尊，地不言厚而自重。扁鵲- Bian Que  (from 史記·扁鵲倉公列傳)    1-  驕恣不論於理      2- 輕身重財    3- 衣食不能適     4- 陰陽并藏氣不定     5- 形羸不能服藥     6- 信巫不信醫Music by The Strayun: Clancy of the Overflow. If you're interested in listening to the entire song, please visit:  thestrayun.bandcamp.com/track/clancy-of-the-overflow

(July 7, 2026 - Hour One)On the show tonight (All Times Eastern):9:14pm - Malcom Reed - How To BBQ Right9:35pm - Steve Ray - Owl's Nest BBQ Supply10:14pm - Sam The Cooking Guy10:35pm - Ali Khan - Ali Khan EatsAll this plus a new "Would You Rather" YouTube Poll Question of the week and results from last week's poll.The BBQ Central Show SponsorsPrimo GrillsFireboardMicallef Cigars – Premium Hand Rolled Cigars

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VOV1 - Trong không khí trang nghiêm tại Đại giáo đường Grand Mosalla ở thủ đô Tehran, từng dòng người lặng lẽ nối dài để tiễn biệt Đại giáo chủ Ali Khamenei - vị Lãnh tụ tối cao đã dẫn dắt Iran suốt 37 năm.

VOV1 - Trái ngược với nhận định của nhiều nhà phân tích về việc các nước sẽ dè dặt cử đại diện tới Iran do lo ngại phản ứng của Mỹ, lãnh đạo và quan chức cấp cao của nhiều quốc gia đã dồn dập đến Tehran để dự lễ tang Đại giáo chủ Ali Khamenei.Theo các nguồn chính thức của Iran và khu vực, trong số các lãnh đạo cấp cao khu vực và thế giới đến Iran hôm qua để dự lễ tang Đại giáo chủ Ali Khamenei, có Thủ tướng Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif và Tổng tư lệnh quân đội quốc gia Pakistan, Thống tướng Asim Munir; Thủ tướng Iraq Nizar Amidi và Chủ tịch Quốc hội Iraq Mohammed al-Halbousi; Phó Tổng thống Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ Cevdet Yilmaz; Tổng thống Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon; Thủ tướng Armenia Nikol Pashinyan; Tổng thống Georgia Mikheil Kavelashvili; Chủ tịch Quốc hội Uzbekistan Nuriddin Ismoilov … Đại diện các nước vùng Vịnh đến Tehran có Thứ trưởng Ngoại giao Saudi Arabia Waleed El Khereiji, phái đoàn quan chức Oman. Các lực lượng chính trị khu vực như người Kurd ở Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine, cùng đại diện chính đảng các nước Nga, Ấn Độ, Bulgary, Thái Lan… cũng được báo cáo đã đến Iran dự lễ tang Đại giáo chủ Ali Khamenei.Trước đó, Bộ Ngoại giao Iran thông báo hơn 100 nước sẽ cử đại diện tham dự lễ tang. Lễ tang Đại giáo chủ Iran Ali Khamenei dự kiến diễn ra đến hết ngày 9/7, gồm nhiều nghi thức và hoạt động quy mô lớn được tổ chức ở một số địa phương của Iran và Iraq. Đây được coi là tang lễ có quy mô lớn nhất trong nhiều thập niên tại Iran cũng như cả khu vực. Cảnh sát quốc gia Iran ngày 2/7 thông báo triển khai 265.000 nhân viên an ninh tham gia bảo vệ sự kiện đặc biệt này./.VOV Ai CậpLễ tang của cố Lãnh tụ Tối cao, Đại giáo chủ Ali Khamenei diễn ra từ ngày 4 - 9/7. (Ảnh: Reuters)

VOV1 - Cảnh sát quốc gia Iran hôm nay thông báo sẽ triển khai 265.000 nhân viên an ninh bảo vệ lễ tang Đại giáo chủ Ali Khamenei, chuỗi sự kiện kéo dài trong nhiều ngày, tại nhiều địa điểm và có sự tham dự của hàng triệu tín đồ Hồi giáo.Cảnh sát quốc gia Iran cho biết các lực lượng an ninh sẽ được triển khai để truy trì trật tự, bảo vệ các khu vực trọng yếu và điều phối những dòng người đông đúc tham gia các nghi thức trong tang lễ. Dự kiến, sẽ có hàng triệu tín đồ Hồi giáo tham gia các nghi thức và hoạt động liên quan được tổ chức tại nhiều địa điểm khác nhau ở Iran, từ nay đến hết ngày 9/7. Tuy nhiên, các phương án bảo vệ an ninh chi tiết, không được tiết lộ.Trước đó, Bộ Ngoại giao Iran hôm qua thông báo hơn 100 nước sẽ cử đại diện tham dự lễ tang Đại giáo chủ Ali Khamenei, trong đó có nhiều nguyên thủ quốc gia, người đứng đầu Chính phủ và quan chức cấp cao. Thủ tướng Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif cùng đại diện cấp cao các nước Trung Quốc, Nga, Ấn Độ, được cho là chắc chắn tham gia.Đại giáo chủ Ali Khamenei cùng nhiều lãnh đạo cấp cao Iran, đã bị hạ sát trong đòn không kích bất ngờ của liên quân Mỹ-Israel vào Tehran hôm 28/2/2026, ngày đầu tiên xung đột bùng phát. Ngoài Iran, hoạt động tưởng nhớ Đại giáo chủ Ali Khamenei cũng được tổ chức dịp này tại một số quốc gia khu vực như Iraq, Yemen.Bá Thi/ VOV Ai CậpẢnh reuters

Hello Interactors,Welcome to summer where Interplace turns its attention to physical geography and the environment. It's already a crazy El Niño — thanks in large part to global warming — and the United States is having a big birthday. How might these be related and what to do about it?What follows is not a celebration or a condemnation, but more of a reckoning. I look at what was built, what was deliberately forgotten, and what is now continually arriving, season by season, in forms of weather the founders could not have imagined.Although Alexander Humboldt — one of the world's most famous scientists at the time — did warn Jefferson of the effects of human-induced climate change in 1804. He based his prediction on changes he observed in forests and water systems as a result of mono-crops and industrial “steam and gas”. Jefferson ignored him.BUILDING, BURNING, BILLOWING BACKOn this momentous 250th Fourth of July, when the world is experiencing record level extreme weather events, let's reflect on how over the last 250 years the United States helped build, extract, and then burn the material and political conditions that made climate change possible. From the beginning, it tied itself to land, extraction, mobility, and expansion. Over time those commitments became an energy system built on coal, oil, gas, highways, suburbs, industrial agriculture, and a development model that treated nature as an inexhaustible storehouse. That legacy is now legible in the atmosphere itself. Let's light a Roman Candle in celebration!Even before the 4th of July fireworks celebrations create another nationwide 42% average increase in fine particulate matter (Seidel, et al., 2015), the United States bears the single largest share of cumulative historical CO₂ emissions of any nation . We represent roughly 20 percent of the global total since 1850 contributing approximately 0.2°C of warming to date (Carbon Brief, 2021; UNEP, 2023). To represent four percent of the world's current population and be responsible for nearly a fifth of its cumulative warming is not a coincidence of geography or fake news. It is the outcome of deliberate choices about how a republic would be organized, energized, and expanded across two and a half centuries.The United States has long imagined freedom in spatial terms: movement, property, settlement, mastery, frontier, and circulation. Those abstract ideals were made real through land theft and remade landscapes, as well as through infrastructure built in significant part by African and African American enslaved labor. Each step along the way depended on ever-greater throughput of energy, labor, and material. In that sense, the country's history is also a history of how thought became organized around extraction and exploitation, until those thoughts and actions themselves became a kind of common sense. But by the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries increased industrialization meant emissions grew. They surged during the postwar era and peaked in the early 2000s — a trajectory that maps almost exactly onto the spatial project of suburban expansion, highway construction, and fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture (Climate Change Tracker, 2024). Two-thirds of the country's cumulative warming impact derives from fossil CO₂ alone. The built environment of American freedom is as inseparable from the chemical footprint it left behind as a firecracker's scattered debris and carbon residue.This leaves us with a climate crisis that is not just the result of a few bad policy choices in the late twentieth century. We exist in a cumulative outcome of a long national project that normalized combustion as prosperity and treated atmospheric consequence as some distant abstraction. Kind of like turning up the radio to drowned out the sound of your car making a funny noise. The federal state government played a central role in this process. Not only through direct policy and subsidies, but through the development of roads, ports, power systems, agricultural regimes, and military logistics that expanded the scale of fossil dependence at every scale of national life.The fossil fuel industry understood this trajectory earlier than the public was permitted to know. A systematic analysis published in Science found that ExxonMobil's own scientists accurately projected and skillfully modeled global warming due to fossil fuel burning from as early as 1977. These projections are consistent with subsequent observations. And yet, for decades, the company publicly pushed doubt and denial (Supran, Rahmstorf, & Oreskes, 2023). Consequently, what America projects as “economic growth”, fueled enormously by the fossil fuel industry, is embedded not only in a collective national memory but in the scientific record.The irony is that America's confidence in its own permanence rested on a false sense of geography. The landscape seemed stable because the costs were displaced in the form of upstream mining, downstream pollution, hidden emissions, imported and exported harm, and deferred climate effects. The effects on the atmosphere made that displacement impossible to sustain. The ‘progress' that had been scattered across space and time returns as heat, drought, fire, flood, and increasingly volatile weather. We built a world in which the rewards of extraction were immediate while the penalties were delayed. Call it what you will — the climate crisis is just the debt of delay, dressed as disaster.KNOWING, NEGLECTING, NEUTERING KNOWLEDGEThe USA did not simply keep burning and expanding on autopilot. By the late twentieth century, it had also begun to lose the institutional capacity to understand what its own trajectory meant. The problem was no longer that the 1970's scientific picture Exxon had already portrayed was absent. The evidence was clear. By the early 1990s the United States had ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and formally accepted the goal of returning greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by the end of the decade.The barrier to progress was not ignorance, but a degraded relationship between knowledge and power. This was engineered in part by more fossil fuel industry campaigns to sow doubt about science it privately accepted. Historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway documented how a loose-knit network of industry-connected scientists ran effective campaigns to mislead the public on issues from tobacco to climate change. They exploited the media's tendency toward false balance and keeping controversy alive long after scientific consensus had been reached (Oreskes & Conway, 2010). The strategy was to make certainty seem uncertain, and it worked. For decades, political inaction persisted through every window of action that may have helped.By the mid-1990s, climate change had become legible enough for federal institutions to name, study, and plan around, but the machinery of governance was being bent in the opposite direction. Newt Gingrich and the Republicans who rose with him may not have invented anti-government politics, but they weaponized it. Curiously, through pro-governmental politics. While their rhetoric promised efficiency and modernization, in practice it often meant cutting staffs, weakening committees, abolishing subcommittees, and treating the legislature less as a site of deliberation than as a theater of permanent combat. After all, their own staffers affectionately referred to Gingrich and his wrecking crew as ‘jihadists' — even as those same politicians promulgated and attached that term as a slur toward Muslims. One of the most consequential acts of this period was the 1995 defunding of the Office of Technology Assessment. This was a bipartisan, independent body that had produced over 750 reports on complex scientific and technical questions since 1974, including major studies on energy policy, environmental risk, and the long-range consequences of atmospheric change. Gingrich had vowed to kill the OTA during his 1994 election campaign. He kept his promise, and with it eliminated one of Congress's primary mechanisms for converting scientific knowledge into durable legislative capacity (Wikipedia, Office of Technology Assessment; AAAS Science, 2019).A legislature cannot respond intelligently to a long-range atmospheric crisis if it has stripped away the very mechanisms designed to synthesize evidence, test assumptions, and tackle complex questions over time. What replaced deliberations mediated by experts was a vacuum quickly filled by industry lobbyists — the same industry that, amongst themselves, knew exactly what Gingrich was doing. Research on institutional dynamics in climate governance consistently finds that fragmented policy, weak intergovernmental coordination, and the erosion of technical capacity are among the most significant barriers to effective long-range climate action (Jaisridhar et al., 2025; Birchall, Bonnett, & Kehler, 2023).The thinning of Congress's own cognitive infrastructure in 1995 was a bureaucratic adjustment that disabled the country's capacity to govern on topics beyond the timescales and dimensions of a single administration. The political system was becoming less capable of converting recognition into sustained action precisely as the need for that conversion became most urgent. The United States not only helped create the conditions for warming but undermined its own capacity to govern the effects warming created. The atmosphere was warming and so was the willful weakening of the world's most powerful potential partner in planetary protection.CASCADES, CRISES, AND COMING TO TERMSWhat follows is not simply a warmer world, but a less legible and actionable one. Once a political system weakens its own capacity to think long-term, it becomes ill-equipped to face a future that arrives not as a single rupture but as a cascade of self-reinforcing disruptions. We've all experienced or read about hotter summers, fire, more erratic rainfall, stressed coasts, shifting storm tracks, and weather that no longer behaves as the old seasonal calendar once did. Anthropogenic warming is already increasing variability in frequency and severity of weather systems. This in turn can alter local precipitation variability, storm behavior, and the climatic conditions on which seasonal expectations have long depended (Robinson, 2021; Wang et al., 2017; Scher & Messori, 2019). In several regions, climate change is expected not only to shift average conditions but to change seasonal predictability itself — especially for rainfall — making the future harder to read through the calendars and risk assumptions modeled and built from the past (Le et al., 2023; Delsole et al., 2014).Even now, the atmosphere offers a live demonstration of this instability. On June 11, 2026, NOAA officially declared that El Niño has arrived — with a 63 percent probability of reaching “very strong” intensity, defined as sea surface temperature anomalies of at least +2°C in the equatorial Pacific. This would rank it among the largest events in the historical record (NOAA, 2026). What makes 2026 categorically different from prior super events is not just its projected intensity but its baseline. This El Niño begins from the warmest ocean temperatures in human history, layered onto anthropogenic warming that has already pushed the planet to 1.55°C above preindustrial levels.As one paper argued in April, the El Niño is the accelerant; the fuel was already stacked (Hansen et al., 2026). The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has placed an 86 percent probability on at least one year between 2026 and 2030 surpassing 2024 as the warmest on record, with 2027 — when El Niño's thermal lag typically produces its most extreme global signals — as the most likely candidate (WMO, 2026).When that variability is layered onto long-term warming, the result is not just discomfort but a deeper erosion of climatic predictability. ENSO — the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system that drives El Niño's periodic warming and its counterpart La Niña's cooling across the tropical Pacific — is not a new phenomenon, but its behavior is changing. Model evidence indicates that ENSO-related rainfall variability is likely to intensify and shift eastward under greenhouse warming, creating more severe and sometimes novel climate conditions across the terrestrial tropics (Cai et al., 2021; Rifai, Li, & Malhi, 2019). The question is no longer whether the climate will change, but how many of the social and political structures built on climatic regularity can survive that change.Climate change is often presented as a technical or environmental problem to be solved. Especially amidst a culture of pervasive techno-optimism. But climate change is way more fundamental than this. It's a reordering of the relationship between how we need to think and the geography in which we exist. This includes political geography and a reordering of political imagination as it relates to physical geography. The old originally envisioned republic of the USA assumed that land could be mastered, seasons could be predicted, and institutions could absorb shock without losing coherence. Those assumptions no longer hold.The old assumption that infrastructure could be planned around stationary baselines is increasingly at odds with the evidence. We can already see how energy systems show measurable vulnerability to climatic uncertainty and extremes. Modeled systems evidence declines in reliability and large performance gaps when future weather variation is not adequately incorporated into planning (Perera et al., 2020; Ouyang et al., 2023).As a result, the challenge ahead is not adaptation to these changes in the narrow sense, but reconstruction of our relationship to them in the broad sense. This may seem impossible in today's American political system, but truly Democratic societies will need stronger scientific institutions, more durable legislative capacity, and trustworthy public agencies able to interpret risk before disaster becomes routine. They will need not only infrastructure, but intelligence. Embodied intelligence — embodied engagement with physical and social environments rather than as a purely singular-brain augmented by LLM computation. This includes a renewed ability to gather, preserve, and act on knowledge over long horizons.The literature on adaptation governance is clear that resilience depends on organizational learning, intergovernmental collaboration, inclusive planning, and long-term institutional capacity. Short-term, reactive, market or donor-driven interventions that respond to emergencies without building the durable frameworks that prevent them won't work (Birchall et al., 2026; Rahman & Islam, 2024). What this means practically is the reconstitution of the kind of congressional expertise that was dismantled in 1995. We need not merely revive the OTA but to imagine a broader democratic intelligence infrastructure capable of thinking on the timescales that climate change demands — decades, generations, and centuries. Without that, climate change will continue to be experienced as a succession of emergency, political, or market conditions rather than as a governable transformation.We can do this. After all, a country that once imagined itself through movement, expansion, and mastery made a certain kind of freedom seem natural. A new kind of freedom can be made to seem natural too. But right now our current system returns prosperity for many — but heat, flood, instability, and constraint for all. What was built now must be lived within — good and bad — while what was extracted must now live in the atmosphere — all bad. What gets burned today, will burn more later. The political order that was built through extraction, combustion, and territorial expansion must confront the atmospheric and hydrological consequences of those choices.That confrontation will only intensify. Past century's cumulative emissions have already committed the planet to changes that will outlast any government, living generation, or institution that exists. Including you and me. The next 250 years will belong less to societies that imagine escape than to those that can build the institutional intelligence, infrastructural redundancy, and long-term public capacity required to inhabit a less legible and hospitable climate (Ouyang et al., 2023; Jaisridhar et al., 2025).So, as you watch the rocket's red glare and bombs bursting in air — sending even more smoke, chemicals and debris everywhere — know the flag will still be there. But to endure, it must repair an institution to be once again knowledgeable and fair.ReferencesBirchall, S. J., Villeneuve, K., Rose, D., Baran, N. N., & Adams, S. (2026). Exploring the modifying effects of adaptive capacity on resilience to climate change across 4 coastal cities in British Columbia, Canada. Cities.Birchall, S. J., Bonnett, N. L., & Kehler, S. (2023). The influence of governance structure on local resilience: Enabling and constraining factors for climate change adaptation in practice. Urban Climate.Cai, W., McPhaden, M., Grimm, A., Rodrigues, R., Taschetto, A., Garreaud, R., … Vera, C. (2020). Climate impacts of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation on South America. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.Cai, W., Santoso, A., Collins, M., Dewitte, B., Karamperidou, C., Kug, J., … Zhong, W. (2021). Changing El Niño–Southern Oscillation in a warming climate. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.Carbon Brief. (2021). Analysis: Which countries are historically responsible for climate change?Climate Change Tracker. (2024). United States of America: Historic contribution to global warming since 1850.Delsole, T., Yan, X., Dirmeyer, P., Fennessy, M., & Altshuler, E. (2014). Changes in seasonal predictability due to global warming. Journal of Climate.Holgate, C., Evans, J., Taschetto, A., Gupta, S. A., & Santoso, A. (2022). The impact of interacting climate modes on east Australian precipitation moisture sources. Journal of Climate.Jaisridhar, P., Nirosha, R., Jasimudeen, S., Senthilkumar, M., Ponsneka, I., & Raja, P. (2025). Institutional dynamics in climate change adaptation: A bibliometric analysis. Frontiers in Environmental Science.Le, P., Randerson, J., Willett, R., Wright, S., Smyth, P., Guilloteau, C., Mamalakis, A., & Foufoula-Georgiou, E. (2023). Climate-driven changes in the predictability of seasonal precipitation. Nature Communications.Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2010). Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury Press.Ouyang, H., Tang, X., Zhang, R., Baklanov, A., Brasseur, G., Kumar, R., Han, Q., & Luo, Y. (2023). Resilience building and collaborative governance for climate change adaptation in response to a new state of more frequent and intense extreme weather events. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science.Perera, A., Nik, V., Chen, D., Scartezzini, J., & Hong, T. (2020). Quantifying the impacts of climate change and extreme climate events on energy systems.Rahman, M. M., & Islam, M. S. (2024). Institutional dynamics and climate adaptation: Unveiling the challenges and opportunities in coastal Bangladesh.Rifai, S., Li, S., & Malhi, Y. (2019). Coupling of El Niño events and long-term warming leads to pervasive climate extremes in the terrestrial tropics.Robinson, W. (2021). Climate change and extreme weather: A review focusing on the continental United States.Scher, S., & Messori, G. (2019). How global warming changes the difficulty of synoptic weather forecasting.Supran, G., Rahmstorf, S., & Oreskes, N. (2023). Assessing ExxonMobil's global warming projections.UNEP. (2023). Current and historic contributions to global warming and emissions in the United States from 1850 to 2021. Statista.Wang, X., Jiang, D., & Lang, X. (2017). Future extreme climate changes linked to global warming intensity. Science Bulletin.Hansen, J., Kharecha, P., Morgan, D., & Vest, J. (2026, April 15). Super-Duper El Niño. Columbia University Earth Institute.National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2026, June 11). El Niño forms, expected to strengthen, say NOAA forecasters [Press release].NOAA Climate Prediction Center. (2026, June 11). ENSO diagnostic discussion. National Weather Service.Seidel, D. J., & Birnbaum, A. N. (2015). Effects of Independence Day fireworks on atmospheric concentrations of fine particulate matter in the United States. Atmospheric Environment.World Meteorological Organization. (2026). Global annual-to-decadal climate update 2026–2035. WMO. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

 It’s CANADA DAY!! So this week the boys talk Canadian comics. Big name Canadian characters. All your favourites like…. Active Jim! Tang! Iron Man (Not that one)! Penguin (Not that one either)! Brok Windsor! Nelvana! Polka Dot Pirate! Speed Savage! And lots more. You know all those right? Yea, us either. So let’s explore the Canadian Comic boom of WWII and beyond. You might even hear about a superhero called Kim Mitchell and his sidekick Paddy O’ Lantern…… We’ll show ourselves out…. to a Canada Day celebration! Direct Download: MP3

Jambo! Today, travel medicine specialists Drs. Paul Pottinger & Chris Sanford talk with GYN expert Dr. Karen Tang, who will answer your questions about healthy travel during menopause. Topics include:What causes hot flashes, and how can I deal with them during travel?Should I change my medical hormone therapy if I'm headed to a hot location?Should I stop my hormone treatment before a long trip to reduce the risk of getting a blood clot?Any tips for keeping hormone patches on in wet, sweaty locations?What if I lose my hormone supply during travel--will I be able to get more overseas?Any advice for sleeping well during menopause?Sex and menopause--how can I get back in the game?Vaginal estrogen--any reasons NOT to use it?How can someone be a good partner to a fellow traveler experiencing menopause?UTI recurrences during travel--how can I avoid this?What about recurrent yeast infections--anything to recommend for prevention and treatment?If someone is reluctant to travel because of structural pelvic concerns, any advice?How can I be a good traveling companion for someone experiencing menopause?We hope you enjoy this podcast! If so, please follow us on the socials @germ.and.worm, subscribe to our RSS feed and share with your friends! We would so appreciate your rating and review to help us grow our audience. And, please visit our website: germandworm.com where you can find all our content and send us your questions and travel health anecdotes. Or, just send us an email: germandworm@gmail.com.Our Disclaimer: The Germ and Worm Podcast is designed to inform, inspire, and entertain. However, this podcast does NOT establish a doctor-patient relationship, and it should NOT replace your conversation with a qualified healthcare professional. Please see one before your next adventure. The opinions in this podcast are Dr. Sanford's & Dr. Pottinger's alone, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the University of Washington or UW Medicine.

We've looked at several different members of the court during the reign of Uno no Sarara, aka Jitou Tennou.  Today we start to look at her life, who she was, and what she did.  In this first part we'll touch on some of her big accomplishments, including building the Fujiwara capital, patronage of Ise Shrine, and even the publication of the Kiyomihara law code.   For more, check out the podcast blogpost:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-152   Rough Transcript: Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is episode 152: Queen Uno no Sarara, Part 1 It was rare that something would pull people from the fields at the height of the season, but it wasn't every day that people of Iga had the opportunity to watch a true royal procession.  They gathered on either side of the street as the parade passed through town.  There were horses and carts, but also just numerous men carrying various bags and provisions.  There were also military guards, decked out in their finest—just in case anyone got any ideas.  There were also various nobles and government officials, riding with her.  The outfits and color would have been striking, particular to those who had little business with the court.  And at the height of it all was a covered palanquin.  Nobody could see the royal presence inside through the screens, though later they would talk about getting a peek of her hair or her robes.  It didn't matter, the procession itself was enough of a spectacle for all to see. Not everyone was pleased.  A few of the more dour elders complained about how much of a disruption and a distraction it was.  They would at least be somewhat mollified by the news that, for enduring the disruption, they would at least get a break on their taxes that year.  The procession was headed east, to the land of Ise.  Apparently they were going to pay their respects at the shrine there.  Did you know that it was dedicated to the ancestor of the royal family itself?  The actual sun goddess herself, Amaterasu.  Some of the elders shook their heads.  They remembered when everyone had been focused on Mt. Miwa, to the west.  And what about this Buddha that had shown up from overseas?  There were temples to him popping up all over the place.  They weren't so sure about all of this, but they knew their local kami and their local priests, who helped with the local harvests, and that was enough for them.  The court and their fancy learning could figure out what the country needed, but they were going to stay focused on the day to day, instead. Here we are, in the reign of Uno no Sarara, widow of Ohoama and mother to the late Prince Kusakabe, known to history as Jitou Tennou.  We've actually been in Uno's reign for several episodes now, but while we've talked about how that reign began and the roles a lot of other people played in that beginning, this episode I would finally like to start focusing on her—who she was, where she came from, and what she did.  Since that covers a lot of ground, we are going to cover some of her history up to this reign, and we'll be mostly focusing on two major updates—the creation of the new capital of Fujiwara, aka Fujiwara-kyou, and the increased royal patronage of Ise, which is thought to have been responsible for the ascendancy of Amaterasu as the paramount kami of the pantheon of Shinto kami. So let's start at the very beginning. It is traditionally held that Uno no Sarara was born around 645 to Naka no Oe and Soga no Ochi no Iratsume.  Ochi was the daughter of Soga no Kurayamada no Ishikawa no Maro, cousin to the powerful Soga no Iruka.  Naka no Oe's marriage to Ochi no Iratsume and her sister, Mehi no Iratsume, had been part of a strategic alliance with Ishikawa no Maro, who helped him overthrow his cousins and institute the Taika Reforms.  We talked about all of that back in Episode 106, as well as subsequent podcasts after that covering the next several reigns. So 645 is about the earliest Uno no Sarara may have been born, the very start of the Taika era, when her father began instituting a lot of changes based on continental practices. She would have grown up in the inner buildings of the Asuka court during this  time of immense change.  She was probably a bit young when the Toyosaki palace was first built, though she may have remembered when the court abandoned it and moved back to Asuka.  Unfortunately, when she was only five years old, tragedy struck.  Ishikawa no Maro, who had been made the Udaijin, or Minister of the Right, was slandered by his own brother, Soga no Himuka, and in return, Naka no Oe sent a force to have him punished.  When he saw he could not get away, Uno no Sarara's grandfather, Ishikawa no Maro, took his own life.  The Nihon Shoki—written, I should note, at least partly under the direction of Maro's granddaughter—claims that evidence came to light demonstrating his innocence, and he was posthumously exonerated.  Maro's daughter, Miyatsuko no Iratsume, was so saddened by all of this that we are told she died of a broken heart. Miyatsuko no Iratsume appears to be another name for Ochi no Iratsume, and if so, it would mean that Uno no Sarara lost both her mother and grandfather when she was only five years old due to the actions of her own father.  This sounds to me like it should be some kind of villain origin story. From there, she was likely taken care of by her aunts and other women in the palace, at least until 657.  It was about that time, at the age of 13, that she was married off to her uncle, Prince Ohoama. We don't have a precise age for Ohoama, but he was likely no more than 5 years younger than Uno's father, Naka no Oe, and some estimates suggest he was in his late 20s or early 30s, taking to wife his 13 year old niece. I can't help but think, here, of the Heian period novel, the Tale of Genji, where the titular character, Genji, finds Lady Murasaki and marries her at the age of 10.  Uno no Sarara would have grown up in her uncle-husband's home, and she was still young when the entire realm was placed on a war footing.When the court moved to Kyushu in 661 for the prosecution of the war on the continent, Uno no Sarara went with her husband, and a year later gave birth to their son, Prince Kusakabe.  She was probably about 18 years old at the time.   I suspect that means She  probably knew about her grandmother, Takara Hime, passing away, something that the inner circle of the royal family had attempted to keep relatively quiet for fear of disrupting the war effort.   Soon after her own son was born, news came back that the forces on the continent had lost.  Baekje had fallen, and Yamato could be next.  She would have traveled with her husband and the rest of the court back to Asuka and, eventually, up to Ohotsu, where her father now ruled with his brother as his right-hand man and heir to the throne. At this time, Uno no Sarara was no stranger to politics.  While her husband was in line for the throne, she knew that her brothers were also potential claimants, once they came of age. The Nihon Shoki disqualifies them through their parentage, but we see that didn't stop the Afumi court from rallying behind Prince Ohotomo.  There was also the royal princes Kawashima and Shiki.  Prince Takeru would have technically been a potential threat as well, had he not died, tragically, at only eight years of age. Now, technically, some may have been more in line than others, but Uno no Sarara knew how her own father had jumped the line, displacing her late uncle, Furubito no Oe, and it was clear something similar might happen this time around.  There were also likely a few indications that not everything was great between her father and her husband, although you would hardly know it from the number of her siblings that were also residing in the north chambers of his residence. Things came to a head in 671.  At this point, Uno no Sarara was in her late 20s with a 10 year old son, and it was looking, for a moment, like her father, despite his illness, might have Ohoama killed to pave the way for Naka no Oe's own son, Uno's brother, Ohotomo.  When Ohoama surprised everyone and stepped down, taking the tonsure, she was the only one to follow him.  We don't know if this is because she was that loyal to her husband, or because she had no other options.  If her mother had taken her own life after her grandfather's death, she may have had nobody but her father, Naka no Oe, to turn to, and he was clearly doing poorly.  If she stayed, then she would be relying on the goodwill of Prince Ohotomo and others while looking after the nine year old son and heir of Ohoama, who was clearly persona non grata at court. In contrast, one of Ohoama's other consorts, Munakata no Amago no Iratsume would have had the Munakata family to fall back on, should she need it, and her son, Prince Takechi, was a bit older.  In addition, Uno's  sister, Ohota no Himemiko had passed away earlier, in 667, and it is unclear who cared for her son, Prince Ohotsu, who was only a year younger than Uno's son, Kusakabe.  However, he, too, appears to have remained at the Afumi court with his caretakers. So Uno no Sarara went to Yoshino with her husband.  From this point on, Yoshino would become an important place for her, and during her own reign she would frequently make visits to the palace there, sometimes just for a couple of days at a time. After Naka no Oe's death, and the entire conflict of the Jinshin no Ran that kicked off in 672, Uno stayed by her husband's side.  She and Kusakabe made the incredible overnight journey from Yoshino to the other side of the Kii Peninsula, eventually setting up in Mie.  Ohoama would continue on towards Fuwa pass, where his son Takechi was already stationed with loyal soldiers.  Before that, however, he is mentioned as turning towards Ise—towards Amaterasu.  The implication seems to be that he was praying for victory.  It is also notable that a large part of his support was coming from the East and from areas around Ise. Little is mentioned of Uno's role in the record of the Jinshin no Ran, but in the opening to her reign there is a mention that she addressed the troops and mingled with the throng, until at last they formed a plan.  This seems to indicate that she was involved in the planning, at least, for the prosecution of the war.  On the one hand she was placed well behind the front lines.  On the other hand, she was well positioned to assist with logistics.  Troops and supplies from the north could come down and be redirected to the south depending on what was needed, and communications would likely be more secure through that area fully controlled by Ohoama's troops.  It is easy enough to imagine Uno no Sarara taking a role, even if it isn't explicitly mentioned.  The fact that she is mentioned as much as she is suggests to me that she had plenty to contribute to the war effort. As the war of 672 came to a close, Ohoama had to move from a war footing to one of peacetime governance.  As he ascended to the throne in 673, Uno no Sarara was made his queen.  And in light of the recent issues, Ohoama appears to have leaned heavily on her and other members of the royal family for support. And so Uno no Sarara was not just a delicate flower sitting in the hinter palace, waiting on her husband.  She was an active participant in the government.  When Ohoama called the various princes down to Yoshino and had them swear to uphold and support each other, she was included in their number.  And the Chronicles explicitly mention that when the princes swore to uphold each other, Ohoama swore he would also support them, and then Uno no Sarara made her oath like his.  That is interesting in that she isn't included in the five princes, but rather with the sovereign, her husband.  It appears she approached this from the point of view of a ruler already.  Or perhaps she was not considered to be in the line of succession, and the focus was on upholding the various princes.  Either way, we see how that eventually turned out. Later, when starting the project for what is believed to be the Kiyomihara codes, she was seated on the dais with her husband, indicating that she certainly was involved in various matters of state.  She also gave and received presents from the various nobles, including suits of clothing, gold, and more.  When Ohoama grew ill, and could not carry out the functions of the government alone, he deferred matters to her and to the Crown Prince, presumably meaning her son, Prince Kusakabe. Now Kusakabe is recorded as being made Crown Prince, and thus heir to the throne, however, it has also been suggested that this might not have been the case.  Some have suggested that Prince Ohotsu may have been the actual Crown Prince, and that he wasn't plotting against Kusakabe and his mother, but rather it was the other way around, with Uno no Sarara clearing him off the field to make room for her son. Ohotsu, remember, was the son of Ohoama by way of Ohota-hime, who was a full sister to Uno no Sarara.  That meant that, from a strict bloodline perspective, Ohotsu had just as much of a claim to the throne as did Kusakabe, but Kusakabe was a year older—or so the Nihon Shoki, compiled under the reign of Uno and her successors, would have us believe.  We are also told that Uno was formally designated as Ohoama's queen—but again we have that from the Nihon Shoki, which is more than a little bit biased.   Personally, I feel this theory that Uno no Sarara plotted to have Ohotsu removed without anything else stretches some of what we know, but it does illustrate that Uno no Sarara had a vested interest in ensuring that the crown went to her own progeny.  I'd be more inclined to believe that there was some movement a foot, even if it was perhaps not quite as treasonous as the response to it would warrant. And this catches us up with much of what we know.  Ohotsu was executed, but then Kusakabe passed away, and so Queen Uno no Sarara became Tennou in her own right.  Things hadn't gone exactly to plan, but she still had her grandson, Prince Karu, the late Kusakabe's son, whose mother, Princess Abe, was a younger-half sister to Uno no Sarara.  Abe was the daughter of Naka no Oe and Mehi no Iratsume, making Abe another grand-daughter of Soga no Kuramayada no Ishikawa no Maro.  She was also 17 years Sarara's junior and only a year older than the late Kusakabe.  By all accounts, it seems that Abe and Sarara got on well together, though she is not as prominent in the narrative that we have in the Nihon Shoki.  Still, she had an important role, not in terms of governance, but in terms of ensuring that the line continued.  She was in charge or protecting and raising young Prince Karu until he was ready to take the throne.  In so doing, she would no doubt have had a front row seat to Queen Uno's own efforts. Since Uno no Sarara had already been so involved with the government, it should come as no surprise that she continued many of the efforts attributed to her husband.  In fact, you'll often find references to Temmu and Jitou side-by-side to describe what happened because very few things can be attributed to just one of the two, especially given how long some of these projects seem to have taken.  That said, there were some differences.  While Ohoama, aka Temmu Tennou, had relied primarily on members of the royal family following the Jinshin no Ran, Uno was much more likely to rely on trusted nobles, whose position at court was largely held thanks to the patronage of the royal family.  Having nobles running things again, rather than handing over power to those of the Princely class, may have provided opportunities for those noble houses to once again flex and grow their political muscle, but it was either that or hand that same power over to other princes with claims to royal descent—princes who might encourage the court that it would better if they, themselves, were to succeed the Queen, rather than the young prince, her own actual bloodline.  Even the loyal Prince Takechi, who seems to have supported her and Prince Karu as best he could, could easily have become a threat.  This could be one of the reasons she held on to power as long she did.  It was, after all, a deliberate choice on her part.  She could have had someone else step in as regent, but she chose not to. We've talked about Uno's dealings with Silla and the continent at this time. That was back in Episode 148, when we talked about how Ohoama was mourned and how Yamato dealt with the early missions.  We discussed, thenhow she berated the Silla envoys for not adhering to protocol and turning them away.  She also met with Emishi and Hayato embassies, which only helped to cement Yamato's place as the central hegemony over the archipelago and all those living on the islands.  At first, this was just an extension of what she and Kusakabe had been doing since Ohoama had first grown ill and handed over the reins of government.  But then Kusakabe died—and life went on.  Later, Kusakabe would be remembered as Okanomiya Tennou and the Nagaoka Tennou.  While not counted in the formal lineage, he was still granted the title "Tennou" posthumously, likely to help legitimize his son and that lineage.  And yet, despite this, there is no report of a eulogy or anything similar upon his death.  Even Royal Prince Ohotsu, when he was killed for threatening Kusakabe's own ascendance, is given a fairly wordy entry full of praise for his virtues and how he was remember.  For Kusakabe we get silence.  Things just move on. Indeed, just two weeks after the Crown Prince's death, we get orders talking about given people four holidays each month.  It seems a rather banal announcement coming the same week that the Crown Prince passed away. And banal it may be, but I do want to pick at it a bit.  I think it helps us understand even more the life at that time.  In most of the world, today, we have become accustomed to the western concept of a week with seven days, including two holidays every week—though we just refer to it as the weekend.  Saturday and Sunday began as holy days—the Sabbath in Jewish and then Christian tradition.  Even Judaism only had a single day of rest every seven days.  Many cultures did not have the concept of a weekend.  After all, there wasn't anything particularly special about one day or the other.  A lunar month is just under 30 days—alternating between 29 and 30 days depending on various factors.  Five would fit into that much better than four seven day weeks and two more days.  Or divide it into two 15 day periods, more or less.  Or three weeks of ten days each.  In fact, that is what was popular in the Tang dynasty at the time—though a seven day week had crept in through Buddhism, which had been picked up on the Indian subcontinent thanks to Hellenic influences.  This seven day week, which is now used in modern times, was originally used more by astronomers.  The days corresponded to the Sun, the Moon, and the visible planets. The point is, there's no such thing as a natural weekend.  At some point, the Tang court introduced a rest period every five days for court officials.  In Yamato, it seems that they introduced four holidays.  Specifically, the local governors were to give laborers—those conscripted as corvee labor—four days every month.  It doesn't mention if they are spaced out, or at what intervals, and it was specifically for laborers.  I should probably also mention that, at this time, there wasn't a concept of a "9-to-5" job.  Sure, the court operated on a schedule that may have fit fairly well in our modern life, other than its extremely early start due to the lack of cheap, safe artificial light sources.  Most people, however, especially in the agricultural sectors, were likely working from sunrise to sunset, when necessary.  There was no concept of overtime or a forty hour work week.  You worked when you needed to work, and that was it.  No time cards, just life, punctuated by holidays, festivals, market days, and whatever else needed to happen.  Oddly, in our modern, more regular work schedule we work both more and less, in some ways, than our ancestors did.   Our labor often goes into things beyond our job—everything from taking care of our home to various hobbies that we enjoy. Giving laborers time off from their endeavors was no doubt something they appreciated, but I don't know how much of an impact it had on things long term.  A more interesting endeavor comes a few months later.  That is when Uno had a royal commission come together as commissioners of "good words".  We mentioned this before, especially when talking about Kose no Tayasu, who had been part of this commission, though he was the lowest ranked of the bunch.  At the top it was headed by Prince Shiki, a half-brother to Uno, and one of those who had pledged his loyalty with other members of the royal family down in Yoshino, though at the time Shiki was only about 11 years old.  He was the son of Koshi no Michi no Kimi no Iratsume, and a brother to Prince Osakabe.  In 689, when he took charge of this commission from his half-sister, he would have been in his 22nd year, so this was probably one of his first major assignments. We don't have a finished product that we can point to from this project, so there isn't a clear idea of exactly what the commission did.  Aston believed that they were attempting to determine auspicious words to be used by the court.  By this one could infer that they were looking into the way to draw up formal language for edicts, or how to formally address the sovereign and members of the court.  However, others have suggested that this was more about finding stories and other such things and writing them down.  If that is the case, this may have been a continuation of—or perhaps an addendum to—the history project started during the reign of Ohoama.  The words, or stories, that the commission wrote down were likely used by later Chroniclers, though there is no specific work that is clearly attributed to their efforts.  So in the end we can't exactly know for sure.  What we can see is that Uno no Sarara was continuing to make tweaks and changes to things—and in particular in how things were stated, remembered, and passed down to posterity, one way or another.  This is also part of what we see later that same month, when the 22 books of what we now call the Kiyomihara Law Codes were also published.  Like the history project, this was also begun during the reign of Ohoama, and Uno had continued to see it through.  It appears to have been just the law itself, not necessarily the punishments which made up the other half of the Ritsuryou, but it is still significant.  Unfortunately, we don't know exactly what was in it—the earliest law code that we have good evidence for is the Taihou code, which would come over a decade later—but we have seen some of the edicts and orders and we can make some assumptions based on later law codes as well as the language used to even define the court and how things ran.  Much of what was written had likely been promulgated, previously, and a lot of this may have been more documenting the changes they had already put in place. There is also the Afumi law code, but there are even more questions about that one.  This is possibly the first one written down to this level of detail.  Though it would be superseded, later, it was still an impressive work. As in past reigns, we see things both monumental and mundane.  A month after the law codes were finished, we see about orders to the Mayors of the Left and Right to set up places for Archery—literally glossed as "Ikusa", or "war", but likely because the two had a common root and archery and war were closely intertwined.  As for the Mayors of the Left and Right, this is the first time we are seeing those terms, and I suspect they are also part of the reforms that Uno no Sarara and her late husband had been implementing. The Mayors of the Left and Right of the Capital are known as Kyoushiki or, alternatively, as Misato-zukasa.  They were like kokushi, or governors, except they oversaw the capital city.  Now remember, the quote-unquote "capital city" in use at this point is Asuka—it is the Kiyomihara palace and environs.  There were other streets, buildings, and such around, but nothing terribly organized.  Most family estates were off in their own lands or strongholds.  At the same time, the court was building out a new, permanent capital.  It was taking time—and likely had been put on hold during the three year mourning period for the late Ohoama Ohokimi.  It required that they survey and transform an immense and populated area into a new and impressive capital in the area known today as Kashihara.  This work took years—they likely had to divert labor to build the late sovereign's mausoleum, or misasagi, and there were droughts and other reasons why they may have had to pause work.  And yet, it continued, nonetheless. The main ideal for a capital city was based off of continental models.  While Luoyang may have been the more active capital, the western capital of the Tang dynasty, at Chang'an—modern Xi'an—appears to have been a more quintessential capital city layout, and may have been what the Yamato capital was attempting to mimic—though they may have also been relying on the theoretical Confucian model, as well.  In fact, I tend to think that the Confucian model was closer to this first attempt at a permanent capital.  Early on, excavations assumed that the palace structures were towards the northern end of the city, but further investigations have suggested that the scale of Fujiwara-kyo was much more ambitious, and some maps of the area place the palace towards the center of the city.  Either way, there were several key things about the capital and how it mimicked the continental models.  One of the primary things that Yamato had appropriated from across the strait was the north-south orientation of the palace, with the main audience hall facing south, so as to get the sun.  This meant that, from the point of view of the sovereign in that hall, the left side would be the east and the right side would be to the west.  And so the capital city was divided into a left and right, east and west, and each half had its own administrator responsible for taxation, public safety, and general law and order.  They were, as I said, similar to the governors of the various provinces in the scope of their powers, except that they oversaw the capital city. The building of the Fujiwara capital is perhaps one of the most obvious changes that Uno no Sarara was overseeing.  As I've mentioned before, it was a physical manifestation of court.  The three sacred mountains which were included within the boundaries of the capital were woven into the myths and legends that would find their way into the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki.  The size and scale of the earthworks and the stones laid as foundation demonstrate that this was clearly meant to be a permanent capital, overturning the idea that there would be a huge change every time a sovereign passed away.  Instead, there would be consistency.  The order of the state would go on. Later we'll talk about reasons why the Fujiwara capital was abandoned.  For now, though, let's look at what we see about its construction. In 690, the same year that Uno ascended to the throne, Royal Prince Takechi, Ohoama's oldest son, inspected the site where the new Fujiwara palace was to be placed.  Two months later, Uno no Sarara came out to see it for herself.  I imagine this as being the point where the land had been cleared, and they could see the mountains and the placement and get an idea of the overall size of what they were looking for.  With royal approval, the project continued. A year later, in 691, officials were sent to perform the Chin-sai, the pacification ceremony, for the new capital.  Today, this is a common ceremony, known as a Jichin-sai, or Earth Pacification Ceremony, done before undertaking a construction project.  Theoretically it is before breaking ground on the project, though there is often some amount of preparation that has to be done in preparation.  The idea for the Jichin-sai is to effectively negotiate with the spirits of the land before disturbing the area, a recognition that the process of construction is going to alter the natural landscape.  As such, one wants to propitiate the spirits and the kami that are on the land to ensure that the construction is successful.  This was likely a much older ritual, but this is the first mention we have of it in the record.  This ceremony was also apparently directed at the new capital as a whole, while a year later another ceremony was held specifically for the new palace complex.  In the intervening time we see the court laying out the roads and giving land for the various mansions of court nobles, like Tajihi no Shima's four chou of land—roughly ten acres.  Those of Jikikwoni rank and above were given two chou, and those from Jikidaisan down were given one chou.  Those of Gon rank on down would get land dependant on the number of inhabitants in their fiefs.  First class fiefs would get one chou, while second class would warrant a half chou and at the bottom they would get one quarter chou.  This was apparently the land that they were being given in the capital to build their personal residences.  Other land was given out for markets, temples, and other necessary facilities, but this whole city really was being built from scratch. Shortly after the pacification ceremony for the palace, officials were sent out to the major shrines of the time.  This included the great gods, the Ohokami, of Ise, Yamato, Sumiyoshi, and Kii.  So not just the local kami, but also the larger kami who were seen as the kami of the archipelago more generally. It would still take another year to build the palace.  Uno visited the site a few times during the construction, with her last visit just a quick outing on the 8th month of 693.  At that point it was likely ready, though she wouldn't formally move into the new palace until the first month of 694.  Before that, though, there was one other thing that had to happen.  In the 2nd month of 693 they had to rebury the bodies. That's right.  The Fujiwara capital occupied a huge swath of the plain of what is now known as Kashihara.  And that plain had been settled for centuries—all through the kofun period.  And those kofun, and possibly even older funkyubo, the older mixed-use burial mounds—would have been destroyed in the making of the new capital.  There also may have been plain pit burials that were dug up while laying out roads and foundations.  I don't know that there was anything approaching the size of the larger, keyhole shaped mounds, but we have no way to know for certain how many were there that had to be destroyed or moved.  I also have not seen any indications of any mass reburial site—whether they opened an existing tomb or simply dug a pit in the ground somewhere.  I imagine that such a find would be incredible, but unless archaeologists stumble upon it, I guess we'll never know.  Still, it is interesting, and almost poetic as we move further and further from the kofun period, this feels like the final nail in the proverbial coffin, if you'll forgive the pun.  Indeed, when Uno no Sarara finally passes away, she will become one of the first sovereigns to be cremated, with her ashes and burnt remains then deposited in the existing tomb with her husband, Ohoama, rather than having a new mounded tomb built.  Buddhist style cremation would eventually become commonplace throughout the archipelago, though sovereigns would still have special mausoleums built for their memory, it really was a change from the ancient practices. From 694 onward, the court would meet at the new Fujiwara Palace.  Compared to previous palaces, I can only imagine how impressive this one must have seemed.  Based on what we can tell, it was likely built much more in the continental style.  Previous palaces had largely been in the style of the archipelago, with what we believe was plain wood and a thatched roof.  The Fujiwara palace was likely a mix, but with more of the continental style than the previous Kiyomihara place.  It also dwarfed its predecessor, at over twice the size.  It was actually much closer in size and shape to the Toyosaki palace, in Naniwa.  At the southern end of the palace was the Suzaku mon, the Suzaku gate, followed by the choshu-den'in, a courtyard with two buildings, one in the east and one in the west, where officials could wait and prepare for the day.  From there they would be let into the Chodoin, a large court yard with four buildings on the east and west, and four more at the southernmost point.  These would be where the various departments, or bureaus, would operate.  There were also gates in the east and west of the Chodoin for easier access.  To the north was another gate, leading to the Daigokuden, the main audience hall.  This would have been quite the impressive and imposing structure—the main focus of the palace.  It was in its own walled enclosure, and would have been the seat of the sumera Mikoto, or Tennou.  It was both inside and apart from the Dairi, the inner palace.  This was the actual residence of the sovereign and the royal family.  The dairi itself occupied more land than the entire Kiyomihara palace.  None of the buildings exist, but we can see their footprint from the large foundation stones and there are numerous rooftiles and other architectural features that fell off or were removed and then buried, purposefully or not, allowing us to get some idea of the size and scale of the project. And yet, it appears that this palace may not have been completed when they moved in.  The entire city was likely still under construction, in fact.  The main pieces were in place, but to build an entire city from scratch took a lot of work.  Most of the buildings would have been built with more traditional—and less labor intensive—practices.  You didn't need a false second story gallery some thirty feet off the ground, even if you were the Minister of the Right.  It was enough to have a relatively simple mansion with gardens, servants quarters, and everything else needed to keep you comfortable.  That in and of itself was going to put a strain on labor and other resources. And so it looks like some parts of the galleries and other features may not have been finished even while Uno no Sarara was there.  In fact, it may not have been fully finished by the time they moved again.  The Fujiwara capital, the first permanent capital city, was only occupied from 694 until about 710—less than two decades.  This massive project, taking multiple years and how many people to create, would be abandoned several years later.  The buildings would be torn down and moved to the new site—Heijou-kyou, in modern Nara city.  And yet, the impact of Fujiwara kyou would remain. Besides making changes to the physical landscape, Uno no Sarara was also focused on the spiritual landscape as well.  Both Ohoama and Uno not only supported the Buddhist temples, building new temples and leveraging the ceremonies, but they also supported the traditional kami.  During the Jinshin no Ran, Ohoama turned and addressed the kami of Ise before heading to the Fuwa barrier.  Later we see a greater focus on Ise Shrine, with Saigu, the royal princesses sent to Ise Shrine as the Shrine priestess, being heavily reported.  In fact, the position seems to have not been commented on much until this reign, and there is some thought that Ohoama and Uno actually instituted the practice—or at least made it a formal part of the court and the royal household.  This is combined with their support of the Jingikan, the state governmental body responsible for dealing with kami matters.  At this time it appears to have been even more powerful, in many ways, than the other bureaus or departments of the Great Council of State, the Dajokan. There are plenty who argue that the preeminence of Ise was born in this period.  Early Yamato worship focused more on the deity of Mt. Miwa:  Ohomononushi.  Sun worship seems to have also been baked into the rituals of the ethnic Wa people, but that wasn't necessarily focused on Amaterasu—and Amaterasu was not necessarily seen as a feminine goddess.  Early worship appears to focus on the deities such as Takabi Musubi, and similarly named deities.  These are deities that show up in court ritual, and presumably date back to well before this period.  Thanks to the fact that we get alternate stories in the Nihon Shoki, we occasionally see them take a more central role in events, such as the descent of the Heavenly Grandson, but at the same time we also see that the main throughline of the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki has placed Amaterasu more front and center in the narrative.  Ama Terasu effectively translates to something like "The Shining of Heaven".  In neither the Japanese nor Sinitic language is she particularly gendered most of the time, and this may have been a more generic name for the concept of a sun deity.   I believe it is also somewhat telling that the Ichi-no-miya, the First Shrine, or primary shrine, of Ise is not Ise Shrine, but rather Tsubaki Grand Shrine, which is the home of Sarutahiko Ohokami.  Even in the Nihon Shoki, there is a narrative regarding the yata no kagami, the great mirror, that it was moved from its original location in the Nara Basin over to Ise and the shrine was then established there, marking the shrine as a relative late-comer to the region rather than marking a particularly ancient spot.  The Great Kami of Ise then appears to have taken on some of the shine, pun intended, of Sarutahiko, who is no longer seen as a sun-deity, and is even placed in the way of the Heavenly Grandchild's descent—perhaps a subtle nod to some of the tensions between the worship of one over the other. Besides sending the Shrine Princess, the Saigu, to Ise, the sovereigns themselves made plans to go, in person.  Ohoama made preparations, including purifying himself, but his trip was cancelled due to a sudden death in the palace.  He is never recorded as making the trip, after that.  Uno no Sarara, however, did make the trip, in 692. This was clearly quite the production, and requires several entries in the Nihon Shoki.  The first entry is in the 2nd month of the year, when she makes her intentions clear.  The Court officials were set to task to prepare all the necessary clothing for the trip, which was about 3 weeks out.  This likely also meant preparing the road, ensuring that there would be food, and a place for Uno no Sarara and her entourage to stay when they reached Ise.  The preparations clearly had an impact, as Miwa no Ason no Takechimaro, a Chunagon, or Middle Counselor, presented a memorial to remonstrate with her majesty on the trip.  He noted that they were in the middle of the agricultural season—roughly April or May by modern standards—and a royal trip would have an outsized impact on the areas where she would be traveling through.  His remonstration was heard, and overruled.  Uno no Sarara was determined to go.  As she delegated the Prince Hirose, Tahema no Mabito no Chitoko, and Ki no Ason no Yumibari to all look after the palace while she was away, Miwa no Takechimaro reiterated his remonstration and then took a drastic step:  He offered to her his cap—basically he offered to resign his rank.  This was quite the step, and not from nobody. Miwa no Takechimaro was from a prominent family.  As their name suggests, they were connected to Mt. Miwa, and the worship, there.  Based on what evidence we have, he was probably born around 657 CE, and when he was about 16 years old he was fighting on the side of Ohoama in the Jinshin no Ran.  In particular, he was involved in the fighting near Hashihaka kofun, and then moved over to attack the Afumi forces on the Middle Road.  There is evidence after that of him making his way up through the ranks, and was even one of those who offered a eulogy for Ohoama.  As Chunagon, he was in a fairly powerful position in court, and giving up his court rank would mean not just a loss in status, but also giving up the income associated with that rank. And this remonstration may be why we are told that the court commuted taxes, including forced labor, for the lands that she passed through, and she recognized the local Kuni no Miyatsuko with cap-rank.  She also remitted taxes for those who had been conscripted to help from elsewhere, such as her baggage handlers, the people who built the temporary palace for her to stay in, in Ise, etc.  So even if the procession to Ise had an impact, she seems to have done her best to lessen the blow. As for Takechimaro, we don't see him again in the Nihon Shoki, but he does show up later.  He would become the governor of Nagato, and then later he is given positions such as the Mayor of the Sakyou, or Left Capital.  So it would seem that either his resignation wasn't accepted, or that he was re-hired at some later point.  He would pass away in 706 CE. By the way, there is one other notable feature about him, and you may have caught it as I went over all of this.  That was the name of his uji, or clan:  Miwa, or Ohomiwa.    This means he had a connection to—and possibly a vested interest in—promoting the worship at Mt. Miwa, the traditional Yamato cultic center.  Nothing is outright stated, but it makes sense that someone from Miwa might be a little bit concerned with the extra attention being given to the shrine at Ise around this time—so there is that, as well. Regardless of his intentions, it certainly seems that from that point on Ise Shrine and the deity worshipped there, Amaterasu Ohokami, would be tied to the imperial line from the late 7th century onward.  Clearly the royal patronage of the shrine stepped up, and for the most part we do see a fairly regular stream of Saigu, with one slight exception:  There doesn't appear to have been one during Uno no Sarara's reign.  Ohoku no Himemiko had been sent down during the reign of Ohoama, but she was the sister to Prince Ohotsu, and appears to have returned after his death.  The position appears to have remained vacant until after Uno no Sarara's reign.  It makes me wonder if she wasn't "filling in" for the Saigu, in a way.  That could, in part, explain her travels there. There also may not have been a good candidate at the time, but I find that less believable—perhaps there was no candidate that Uno trusted given the precarious position her own bloodline was in at the moment.  Still, after her reign, the position of Saigu would be regularly filled by a member of the royal family through the end of the Heian period.  It was interrupted by the Genpei wars, and then the practice fell into decline during the period of the Kamakura bakufu.  Late Edo period pro-imperialists tried to restore the practice, but it didn't catch back on. Despite the apparent importance of the shrine to the royal family, it would also remain somewhat aloof.  The priests of the shrine would provide the sacred mirror for ascension ceremonies, but it would be very rare for any sitting sovereign to actually pay a visit to the shrine, and, as I mentioned before, Amaterasu was not one of the deities reflected in the inner court rituals.  Still, she would come to be seen as the dominant kami of the Shinto pantheon, and even today, many shrines will hold space for her as well as the primary deity; home shrines, or kamidana, will often include ofuda for Amaterasu as a central point of worship, with kami associated with one's local shrines as well. So there you have just a little taste of what Uno no Sarara was up to.  Whether she had intended to be in this position or had it thrust onto her, she was no shrinking violet.  She took control of the ship of state and set a course that would continue to influence the archipelago down to the modern day.  The reforms that started with her father and husband she continued and made manifest in the physical and spiritual world.  And this is only the beginning.  There is more to talk about regarding Uno no Sarara's reign, and her eventual abdication, but for that, we will have to wait until Part 2. 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.

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VOV1 - Theo thông tin từ Ban Chỉ đạo 389 tỉnh Quảng Trị, từ đầu tháng 6 đến nay, lực lượng quản lý thị trường đã tiến hành kiểm tra gần 70 vụ, phát hiện 59 vụ vi phạm và xử lý 69 vụ với 71 hành vi vi phạm, xử phạt vi phạm hành chính hơn 1 tỷ 600 triệu đồng. Đáng chú ý, lĩnh vực sở hữu trí tuệ chiếm tỷ trọng lớn nhất với 41 vụ kiểm tra và 51 vụ bị xử lý. Tang vật buộc tiêu hủy gồm hàng nghìn sản phẩm giả mạo nhãn hiệu như quần áo, giày dép, mũ bảo hiểm, phụ kiện điện thoại, phụ tùng xe máy và các mặt hàng thời trang khác. Ngoài ra, lực lượng chức năng còn tịch thu hàng trăm sản phẩm thời trang liên quan đến hàng hóa giả mạo nhãn hiệu nổi tiếng và đang tiếp tục xử lý một số vụ việc có dấu hiệu hình sự. - Hà Nội, khởi tố Giám đốc doanh nghiệp buôn lậu hơn 10.000 tấn chân gà đông lạnh, trong đó có hàng trăm tấn hết hạn sử dụng- Cà Mau: Bắt giữ tàu vận chuyển gần 85 tấn phân Urê không có hóa đơn, chứng từ

Last time we spoke about the battle of Shanggao. From late March to early April 1940, Japanese forces attacked Shanggao in Jiangxi with a multi‑pronged offensive. Chinese commanders used elastic defense and coordinated counter-moves, trading space for time through layered positions until the Japanese advanced into prepared strongpoints. As the 34th Division moved toward the town, assaults repeatedly hit ridges and bridge lines held by the 74th Corps. Heavy air strikes caused chaos, but timely flank redeployments prevented a decisive breakthrough. During the crisis around March 21–24, Chinese units maneuvered an encirclement and executed a controlled breakout at the critical moment. After intense fighting and bombing, the Japanese were routed and fell back to their original positions. The wider war did not change, yet Shanggao proved that disciplined Chinese planning could reverse Japanese offensives against superior initiative and numbers.   #207 Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. By the spring of 1941, the War of Resistance against Japan had been grinding for nearly four years, and the map of China looked increasingly like a wound. Japan controlled the coastal cities, the major river valleys, and most of the productive lowland plains of the north and east. The Nationalist government had retreated far inland to Chongqing, governing a rump state of mountainous hinterland, foreign sympathies, and diminishing resources. The war had long since ceased to look like a conventional conflict between organized fronts and had settled into something grimmer and more ambiguous — a slow war of attrition fought in the mud and rocks of the Chinese interior, punctuated by Japanese offensives designed not to end the war but to compress it, to squeeze the Nationalists tighter with each season until surrender became a rational calculation rather than a humiliation. Japan had tried other methods first. In the late 1930s, Tokyo made serious overtures to Chiang Kai-shek's government, proposing a negotiated settlement that would see China aligned with Japan and the puppet Wang Jingwei government elevated as the vehicle for that arrangement. Chiang refused. He had gambled, and would continue to gamble, that the war in Europe would eventually draw in the Western powers, that American patience with Japanese aggression would run out, and that time was ultimately on China's side. The strategy required suffering in the present to buy survival in the future. Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the subsequent expansion of war across Europe only reinforced Japan's desire to accelerate its operations in China before the international situation made them impossible. By 1940, Japan signaled it intended to resolve the "China Incident" — the bureaucratic euphemism it used to avoid officially acknowledging that it was fighting a full-scale war — once and for all. The question was where. The front was hundreds of miles long. The Japanese army in China was stretched thin despite its nominal strength. Spectacular victories in the lowlands had failed to produce the political capitulation Tokyo expected. And in the mountains of Shanxi Province, a particular irritant had been festering for three years — one that the Japanese could neither ignore nor seem to dislodge. The Zhongtiao Mountains rise along the southern edge of Shanxi Province, running roughly east to west for some two hundred miles, forming a natural wall between the loess plateaus of Shanxi and the plains of northern Henan below. The range is not dramatic by Chinese standards — it is not the soaring, cloud-piercing landscape of Sichuan or Yunnan — but it is rugged, deeply ridged, and extraordinarily difficult to move through quickly. For a defending army with knowledge of the terrain, the Zhongtiao range was close to ideal. For an attacker, especially one dependent on mechanized firepower and coordinated logistics, it was a nightmare. Chinese forces had occupied the Zhongtiao Mountains since 1938, following the fall of Taiyuan and the retreat of Nationalist forces from the broader Shanxi campaign. At a moment when much of northern China was collapsing around them, the garrison there dug in and refused to move. Over the following three years, the Japanese Army mounted thirteen separate offensives against the Zhongtiao position. All thirteen failed. The mountains held. Chinese soldiers would later call it the "Eastern Maginot Line," a nickname that was simultaneously a boast and, in retrospect, a warning — the original Maginot Line, after all, had also been considered impregnable until the enemy simply went around it. But the strategic importance of Zhongtiao went beyond prestige. The mountains commanded the northern approach to the Yellow River crossings — the great geographic boundary that separated Japanese-controlled northern China from the Nationalist-held central and western regions. From their positions in the mountains, Chinese troops could threaten Japanese supply lines, protect their own river logistics, and maintain at least a symbolic presence north of the Yellow River. As long as the Zhongtiao garrison held, Japan could not claim complete control of northern China. It was also a potential launching point for a Chinese counteroffensive, should one ever become possible. The Japanese understood this perfectly. By 1940, eliminating the Zhongtiao position had become not merely desirable but strategically necessary. The First War Zone command responsible for the Zhongtiao garrison was, at least on paper, an imposing force. Between 170,000 and 180,000 men were deployed across the mountain range and its approaches, drawn from multiple armies and organized into several large groupings. The 5th Army Group under Zeng Wanzhong held the central area. The 14th Army Group under Liu Maoen operated in the eastern sector. The 4th Army Group, known as the "Iron Pillar of Zhongtiao" for its tenacious defense of the position over three years, was stationed as the backbone of the force. Individual armies were spread across specific nodes: Pei Changhui's 9th Army at Jiyuan in northern Henan; Zhao Shiling's 43rd Army at Yuanqu at the southernmost tip of Shanxi; Tang Huaiyuan's 3rd Army and Kong Lingxun's 80th Army in the Wenxi and Xiaxian areas; Wu Shimin's 98th Army at Dongfeng Town; Wu Tinglin's 15th Army near Gaoping. The man responsible for holding all of this together was Wei Lihuang, a gifted commander and one of Chiang Kai-shek's most capable generals. Wei had organized the Zhongtiao defense from the beginning, and his strategic instincts were widely respected. He was, by most accounts, the indispensable figure in the garrison's survival. The problem was that Wei had made powerful enemies. His refusal to participate in anti-Communist friction operations — at a time when the Nationalist government was increasingly focused on neutralizing the Communists even at the cost of Japanese resistance — had alienated him from a circle of powerful rivals, including the influential Hu Zongnan. Outmaneuvered at court, Wei was summoned to Chongqing in early 1941 and, under the pretext of strategic consultations, was effectively detained at Mount Emei. He never returned to his command in the Zhongtiao Mountains. The army he had built was left without its architect. The garrison that remained was compromised far beyond its missing commander, however. Three years of static defense had created conditions that corroded military discipline in predictable and insidious ways. Supply lines were unreliable, rations were short, and the soldiers garrisoning remote mountain positions had turned, by necessity and then by habit, to the local economy to sustain themselves. A bustling illicit trade in grain and opium had sprung up across the mountain zone, with Chinese troops selling what they could and buying what they needed from merchants who operated equally comfortably on both sides of the Japanese-Chinese frontier. This was not merely a logistical failure. It meant that Japanese intelligence had abundant commercial cover to infiltrate the garrison area, that security was a fiction, and that the defensive posture of the entire force had quietly shifted from warlike readiness to something closer to bureaucratic occupation. The Japanese had not missed any of this. For months before the offensive, Japanese intelligence agents had worked their way into the garrison's supply networks, trading relationships, and eventually its command structure itself. Japanese special forces had identified key headquarters positions. Informants had mapped the positions of individual units, traced the routes between them, and assessed the readiness of the men holding them. By the spring of 1941, Japanese planners believed, with considerable justification, that they could paralyze the entire Chinese command system within an hour of opening fire. This was not boasting. It was reconnaissance. Back in Chongqing, the intelligence picture was worse than unclear — it was actively distorted. The Nationalist intelligence apparatus issued warnings about Japanese troop movements near the Zhongtiao perimeter in April 1941, but the warnings were partial, their significance disputed, and the political will to act on them absent. A series of conferences were convened at Luoyang, the regional headquarters. Fortification orders were issued. Additional supplies were promised. Almost none of the follow-through actually materialized. The garrison's most powerful formation, the 4th Army Group, had already been transferred away from the area. Its absence left a hole in the defensive line that no amount of paper orders could fill. On the Japanese side, the operation that would eliminate the Zhongtiao garrison was carefully and systematically prepared. It was codenamed the "Central Plains Campaign" — a name that reflected its true ambition, which was not merely to take a mountain range but to reshape the strategic geography of the entire region. The operation was assigned to the North China Area Army under Lieutenant General Tada Shun, an experienced commander who had studied the Zhongtiao problem for years and had a clear understanding of why previous offensives had failed. The core of the attacking force was seven divisions: the 33rd, 35th, 36th, 37th, 41st, and 21st Divisions, along with several independent mixed brigades, puppet Chinese formations, cavalry, and a substantial artillery and air component. The 3rd Air Group, operating from airfields at Yuncheng and Xinxiang, would provide tactical air support throughout the operation. In total, the frontline assault force numbered approximately 100,000 men. This was not a repeat of the previous thirteen offensives, in which the Japanese had probed and pressed at the mountains frontally. This was a comprehensive annihilation plan. Tada's design exploited the geographic shape of the Zhongtiao position itself. The Chinese garrison occupied a roughly crescent-shaped area, with its back to the Yellow River and its front facing north and east into Japanese-held territory. The obvious previous approach — attacking from the north — had failed repeatedly because the terrain favored the defenders. Tada's solution was to attack from three directions simultaneously, with the town of Yuanqu on the Yellow River as the primary objective. Yuanqu was the hinge of the entire Chinese position: it controlled the main river crossings, served as the central supply point for the garrison, and sat at the narrowest point between the mountains and the water. If Yuanqu fell, the Chinese would be cut off from their supply line and divided into two separate pockets. Then each pocket could be destroyed at leisure. To execute this, Tada organized his forces into three attack groups. The eastern group, built around Lieutenant General Harada Yukichi's 35th Division with elements of the 21st Division and the 4th Independent Cavalry Brigade — totaling roughly 25,000 men with armor, artillery, and supporting puppet forces — would drive westward along the Daoqing Road, pushing through Jiyuan and Mengxian toward the eastern flank of the Chinese position. The northeastern group, under Lieutenant General Shozo Sakurai commanding the 33rd Division and an Independent Mixed Brigade, would descend from Yangcheng southward, striking at the middle of the Chinese line. The western and northwestern group, the largest, comprising the 36th, 37th, and 41st Divisions along with the 9th and 16th Independent Mixed Brigades, would push southward from multiple points between Sangchi and Zhangdian, driving straight for Yuanqu. The final element of the plan was the most audacious. Japanese special forces and paratroopers were to land behind Chinese lines on the opening night of the offensive, targeting the Chinese headquarters and communications nodes. If the Chinese command could be blinded and paralyzed in the first hours of the battle, resistance would collapse before it could organize. Given the penetration of the garrison by Japanese intelligence, the paratroopers knew precisely where to go. From late April, Japanese forces quietly moved into their assault positions. Supply dumps were stocked. Artillery was registered on Chinese positions. The attack was set for the morning of May 7, 1941. Everything was ready. The battle opened before dawn on May 7, and it opened everywhere at once. On the eastern front, Harada's 35th Division and its attached formations crossed the start line and drove westward in three parallel columns along the Daoqing Road. More than 5,000 infantrymen, 1,000 cavalry, dozens of artillery pieces, over 100 tanks and armored vehicles, and the supporting puppet troops of Zhang Lanfeng and Liu Yanfeng poured into the Chinese-held area around Jiyuan and Mengxian. The assault had an almost mechanical quality — it moved at the pace of its armor and artillery, methodically grinding through whatever lay in its path. On the northeastern front, Sakurai's 33rd Division descended from Yangcheng with more than 10,000 men, striking at Wu Shimin's 98th Army at Dongfeng Town. Wu was one of the more aggressive Chinese commanders in the garrison, and he did not wait to be overwhelmed. He threw his forces into active resistance on multiple axes, contesting each Japanese advance rather than simply absorbing it. In the fighting around Wangcun, his troops achieved one of the campaign's rare Chinese tactical successes, routing approximately 2,000 Japanese attackers and killing more than 700, including Colonel Hamada, a Japanese regimental commander. It was a genuine local victory, but it could not change the larger picture. On the western and northwestern front, the main Japanese force pushed south with its eyes fixed on Yuanqu. The coordinated weight of three divisions and two independent brigades, all moving along converging axes, was designed to be overwhelming. Individually, a Chinese unit might hold a ridge or a pass for a day. Collectively, there was no way to stop what was coming. And that same night, as the Chinese scrambled to respond to attacks on every side, Japanese paratroopers landed near Chinese headquarters positions. They found what intelligence had promised: a command system already in disarray, staffed by officers who had received no coherent orders and had lost communications with most of their subordinate units. The Japanese were not wrong when they predicted they could paralyze the Chinese command within hours. By the morning of May 8, the Chinese First War Zone headquarters had effectively ceased to function as a coordinating body. Individual armies would fight on, but they would fight alone. The second day of the battle brought the decisive blow. On the afternoon of May 8, the 9th Army under Pei Changhui — already reeling from the pressure of the eastern Japanese columns — abandoned the cities of Ji and Meng and fell back westward. The withdrawal opened a path through the Chinese line, and the Japanese exploited it immediately. That evening, with the assistance of paratroopers who had secured key access routes overnight, Japanese forces reached Yuanqu on the Yellow River's northern bank and took it. The fall of Yuanqu changed everything. At a single stroke, the Chinese garrison's supply line from the south bank of the Yellow River was severed. The main crossing points were in Japanese hands. The two halves of the Chinese position — those to the east of Yuanqu and those to the west — were now separated, unable to reinforce one another. The double encirclement that Tada had designed on paper became a physical reality on the ground. The trap had closed. May 9 brought further disaster. Japanese forces captured Wufujian, another significant point in the Chinese rear. And on this day the battle's human cost began to register in the most stark terms possible. Wang Jun, commander of the newly formed 27th Division of Kong Lingxun's 80th Army, was killed in action fighting in the southern Shanxi mountains. Major General Chen Wenqi, deputy commander of the 24th Division, died in fierce combat near Taizhai Village. And Major General Liang Xixian, having retreated with the remnants of his force to Taizhai and found every route blocked — his options reduced to surrender or death — walked into the Yellow River and drowned himself. He was not the last Chinese officer to choose death over capture. The loss of three generals in a single day was not merely tragic. It reflected something about the nature of the battle that the casualty statistics alone could not capture: the Chinese officers who fought most fiercely and refused to abandon their positions were precisely the men dying, while the broader institutional structure that should have supported them had already failed. The garrison was being consumed from its fighting edge inward. Over the following two days, the Japanese methodically tightened the ring. The eastern column, having taken Yuanqu, split into two prongs: one drove eastward, capturing Shaoyuan by the morning of May 12 and linking up with the forces that had been pressing westward from Jiyuan; the other drove westward to Wufujian, joining with the troops already there. The inner encirclement was now complete and continuous. The Yellow River crossings along the entire Chinese front were blocked. There was no route south that wasn't already under fire or in Japanese hands. The fighting in the mountain passes was, by all accounts, ferocious. At Fengmenkou — a critical pass that both sides recognized as a key chokepoint — the Chinese 9th Army committed the main force of its newly formed 24th Division along with elements of the 54th Division, fighting for every ridge and ravine. The Japanese sent reinforcements and simply absorbed the punishment, pressing forward until numbers and artillery told. By May 12, the position at Jianshan had been surrounded as well, and the outer ring of encirclement had sealed. The Chinese armies in the Zhongtiao Mountains were now divided into isolated pockets, each fighting separately, each trying to find a gap in the Japanese lines that simply wasn't there. Beyond the mountains, the Chinese high command in Luoyang was issuing desperate orders. Units that had already been overrun were instructed to hold positions they no longer occupied. Army commanders who had lost contact with their corps were told to coordinate with formations they couldn't reach. The gap between the orders flowing from headquarters and the reality on the ground had become absolute. The First War Zone command was, in practical terms, a spectator to the destruction of its own army. Of all the days in the three-week battle, May 13 was perhaps the most devastating for Chinese morale. At Cunbu, in the western sector, the 3rd Army under Lieutenant General Tang Huaiyuan had been surrounded and cut off. Tang was among the finest officers in the Nationalist army — a career soldier of exceptional ability, admired by subordinates and superiors alike, the kind of commander who by his personal presence could steady troops on the edge of breaking. He had led the 3rd Army in continuous fighting since May 7, conducting a fighting retreat that had preserved more of his force than most. But there was nowhere left to retreat to. Cunbu was surrounded on all sides. The Yellow River was behind him. The Japanese were in front. Tang Huaiyuan sat with his surviving officers and told them that he would not surrender. Then he shot himself. He was fifty-seven years old. On the same day, Cun Xingqi, commander of the 12th Division, was hit eight times during close combat and died on the field. The tally of dead general officers had now reached five in the space of a week. Tang Huaiyuan's death, unlike the others, resonated as something more than a military loss. He was a symbol of what the Zhongtiao defense had once represented: the possibility that courage and skill could compensate for disadvantages in firepower and logistics. His death seemed to say, loudly, that that possibility was exhausted. Chiang Kai-shek, when news reached him in Chongqing, personally ordered that Tang Huaiyuan be posthumously promoted and honored. The gesture was well-intentioned and entirely beside the point. Tang was dead. His army was destroyed. The gesture could not undo either fact. With the double encirclement complete and the primary Chinese resistance broken, the Japanese Army entered the second and less dramatic but equally brutal phase of its operation: the systematic clearance of what remained. Beginning around May 15, Japanese units shifted from the headlong offensive drives of the first week to methodical sweep operations, moving through the mountain terrain in organized formations, pressing into each remaining pocket and eliminating whatever resistance they found. The Yellow River's northern bank was secured by Japanese forces who established posts at the crossing points, blocking retreat and interdicting any resupply attempt. From the western front, sweep operations continued in a series of movements that lasted until well into June, each one driving Chinese remnants further into smaller and more untenable positions. Japanese after-action reports from this period read with the clinical detachment of men doing carpentry rather than fighting: so many positions cleared, so many prisoners taken, so many bodies counted. For the surviving Chinese forces, this period was one of desperate improvisation. With coordinated resistance impossible and every organized position either taken or surrounded, the remnant armies broke up into smaller columns and attempted to find their own routes out of the encirclement. Their experiences varied enormously depending on their starting position, the initiative of their commanders, and fortune. The remnants of the 3rd Army and 15th Army, under Zeng Wanzhong of the 5th Army Group, managed to push through to Yellow River crossings in the west and get their men across to the south bank, eventually reorganizing at Luoyang and Xin'an. The 93rd Army, which had occupied positions in the northeast, shook off the Japanese pursuit with sufficient speed and organization to cross at Yumenkou and escape into Hancheng County in Shaanxi Province, preserving more of its fighting strength than most. Wu Shimin's 98th Army — whose fighting at Wangcun had been one of the campaign's genuine bright spots — was pushed northward into the Taiyue Mountains, conducting guerrilla operations as it went. Wu himself was wounded during the withdrawal and would spend months recovering; he never fully recovered his health, and would die by suicide the following year. The 43rd Army under Zhao Shiling, which had held Yuanqu before its fall, managed a fighting withdrawal toward Fushan and Yicheng in the north. Pei Changhui's 9th Army conducted several days of guerrilla operations along the Daoqing Road before finding crossings at Xiaodukou and Guanyangdukou and getting across the Yellow River to safety. By May 27, the great majority of the Zhongtiao Mountain garrison had either been destroyed, captured, or withdrawn. The mountains that had held for three years were in Japanese hands. The battle, for all practical purposes, was over. The two sides emerged from the battle with starkly different accounts of what had happened, and the gap between those accounts is itself revealing. Japanese operational records claimed that their forces had killed approximately 42,000 Chinese soldiers on the battlefield, taken around 35,000 prisoners, captured enormous quantities of weapons and supplies, and inflicted total Chinese casualties exceeding 100,000. Against this, Japanese headquarters reported their own losses as 673 killed and 2,292 wounded — a ratio so lopsided that it seemed to describe a completely different kind of warfare. Whether or not the precise numbers are accurate, Japanese sources were consistent in portraying the battle as a catastrophic one-sided rout. The Chinese government's official figures, presented to the public and to allied nations, told a very different story. Nationalist records acknowledged approximately 13,751 officers and soldiers killed, wounded, gassed, or missing, while claiming Japanese casualties of around 9,900. These numbers, by the standards of the actual fighting and the geographic scale of the defeat, strained credulity. They were the numbers of a government that needed, for political and morale reasons, to minimize a disaster it could not afford to fully acknowledge. What is beyond dispute is the strategic result. The Zhongtiao garrison, which had held for three years against thirteen prior offensives, had been destroyed in twenty days. The last significant Nationalist Chinese presence north of the Yellow River in the region had been eliminated. Japan now controlled the northern bank of the river for a substantial stretch, had secured its supply lines through southern Shanxi, and had opened the door for future pressure on Luoyang and ultimately Xi'an. The mountain barrier that had allowed Chinese forces to threaten Japanese logistics was gone. It would not be rebuilt. Six senior Chinese generals had died in the battle: Wang Jun, Chen Wenqi, Liang Xixian, Tang Huaiyuan, Cun Xingqi, and others in the fighting. Their deaths were individually remarkable — men choosing death over surrender at rate that reflected both the desperate conditions of the battle and a code of honor that many of them explicitly invoked in their final moments. They were also, in aggregate, a measure of how completely the officer corps had been consumed. In the decades since the battle, historians have returned repeatedly to the question of why a position held for three years collapsed so completely in three weeks. The answers are neither simple nor flattering to the Nationalist government, and they were debated with bitter intensity in Chongqing even while the battle was still being fought. The most immediate cause was the removal of Wei Lihuang. This was not merely the loss of a capable general — it was the destruction of the institutional knowledge and personal relationships that had made the defense function. The Zhongtiao garrison was not simply a collection of soldiers in mountain positions; it was a system, carefully constructed over three years, that depended on specific command relationships, established logistics arrangements, and particular allocation of resources. Wei had built that system. Without him, and without any adequate replacement, it became something far more brittle than it appeared. Below the level of high command, the garrison's gradual corruption was an equally powerful factor. The trading networks, the opium commerce, the penetration by Japanese intelligence — these were not incidental problems but symptoms of a deeper institutional failure. An army that has spent three years in static defensive positions, chronically undersupplied and without a meaningful offensive mission, tends toward exactly this kind of decay. The Nationalist government's decision to prioritize anti-Communist friction operations over Zhongtiao's fighting readiness had removed the 4th Army Group — the backbone of the defense — and had consumed Wei Lihuang's attention and political capital at the worst possible moment. The Japanese plan, too, deserves credit it rarely receives in Chinese accounts of the battle. The three-pronged converging attack on Yuanqu was not simply overwhelming force applied to an obvious target. It was an elegant solution to the genuine tactical puzzle that the Zhongtiao mountains presented, exploiting the garrison's geographic vulnerability with a precision that turned the defenders' mountain terrain from an asset into a trap. The use of paratroopers to decapitate the Chinese command in the opening hours was a sophisticated operational concept that worked almost exactly as designed. Tada Shun was not lucky. He was thorough. Finally, there is the question of Chiang Kai-shek's own priorities. His reported weeping upon receiving news of the defeat was genuine, in the sense that the loss clearly shocked and grieved him. But the decisions that led to the defeat — Wei Lihuang's removal, the transfer of the 4th Army Group, the neglect of fortification and resupply in the months preceding the battle — had been made in Chongqing, not in the mountains. The Zhongtiao garrison had been strategically sacrificed, piece by piece, for political calculations in the internal factional struggle between Nationalists and Communists. Whether Chiang understood the cost of those choices before May 7, 1941, is debatable. After that date, it was difficult to pretend otherwise. The fall of the Zhongtiao Mountains did not end the War of Resistance, but it substantially worsened China's strategic position in the north. Over the following months, Japan used its consolidated control of southern Shanxi to increase pressure on the Yellow River line and probe toward Luoyang. The surviving Chinese armies, reorganized south of the river, were in no position to counterattack. The mountains themselves, stripped of their garrison and secured by Japanese occupation troops, became part of the extended Japanese occupation zone — a territory to be administered and exploited rather than contested. For the men who had fought there, the battle left wounds that went beyond the physical. Entire armies had to be rebuilt from remnants. Officers who had retreated, whether under orders or on their own initiative, faced boards of inquiry in an atmosphere of recrimination and blame-seeking. Some were cashiered. Some faced criminal proceedings. The search for culpability — which was genuine enough, since the failure was genuine — tended to fall on those least able to defend themselves rather than on the senior commanders and political figures whose decisions had created the conditions for defeat. The posthumous honors awarded to Tang Huaiyuan, Liang Xixian, Wang Jun, and the other officers who died in battle were heartfelt, and they were also convenient. The heroic dead could be elevated without requiring the living to answer uncomfortable questions. Their sacrifice was real. The system that wasted it was also real. In the broader history of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain tends to be overshadowed by more famous engagements — Shanghai, Nanjing, Taierzhuang, the later battles along the Salween. This is partly because the Chinese side lost comprehensively and had little interest in memorializing the loss, and partly because the battle's significance was more strategic than dramatic. There was no great last stand, no single moment of heroism sufficient to redeem the catastrophe. There were only men dying in mountain passes, generals walking into rivers, and an entire defensive system disintegrating under the weight of its own contradictions. What the Battle of Zhongtiao Mountain represents, in the end, is a case study in how military positions are really lost. They are rarely lost on the battlefield alone. They are lost in the staff meetings where capable commanders are removed for political reasons. They are lost in the supply depots that never get restocked. They are lost in the informal economies that grow up when institutions stop functioning. They are lost in the intelligence assessments that are written and ignored. They are lost, finally and irreversibly, in the early morning hours when the guns open simultaneously on three sides and the men at the radios discover that no one is answering.     I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. On May 7, 1941, Japan opened a three-front assault on Zhongtiao Mountains; paratroopers disrupted command night. With the 9th Army withdrawing, Yuanqu fell on May 8, severing supply and trapping the garrison. Fighting raged through May 13, costing generals, until Japanese sweeps cleared pockets; survivors escaped south of Yellow River.

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We are super excited to bring back one of Advanced Squad Leader's best contributors, Jim Bishop.  Jim will discuss the current status of his blog, his thoughts on the process of scenario design and his part in holding tournaments with Fortenberry. He will return on the next show for an in-depth look at his newest article on Tanks in the latest Journal. First, we have some banter about Space Food Sticks and Tang and other oddities while giving a sneak peek at some Swag from the next Grumbler Jones Tourney. SHOW LINKSGrumble Jones Blog's New LookBishop Says on ASL AcademySHOW TIMES2:00 Grumbler Swag Gifts and Tourney Slide Show10:00 Too Much Banter Perhaps15:40 Jim Bishop  (The Good Part)40:38 Total Running TimeThis show is brought to you by Bounding Fire Productions and our Patreons!Theme song by Derek K. Miller of Penmachine.The views and opinions expressed on The 2 Half-Squads are not necessarily those of the hosts. You can also watch the show on our Youtube channel.Download this episode (right-click and Save)

In this episode of FYI, Brett Winton and Chase Prather host Andy Tang, partner at Draper Associates, to discuss how venture capital is evolving alongside AI, deep tech, and shifting market dynamics. Andy reflects on his 20-year investing career, the growing importance of AI-native companies, and why the cost of execution is rapidly declining for startups. The conversation explores founder psychology, the role of contrarian investing, and how Draper approaches unconventional ideas ranging from artificial wombs to AI-generated companies and personalized cancer therapies. Andy also shares insights on venture ecosystems, market cycles, and the characteristics that separate enduring founders from everyone else.Key Points From This Episode: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:06:09 How AI-native startups are reshaping venture capital strategies.00:20:47 Why the cost of building companies is falling dramatically.00:28:18 How venture ecosystems evolve through successful Initial Public Offering (IPO) cycles.00:42:11 How venture investors evaluate founder ambition and long-term outcomes.00:50:02 How AI could enable single-person or founderless companies.00:53:26 The idea of growing replacement organs outside the human body.00:54:01 Personalized “end-of-one” cancer treatments and custom clinical trials.00:57:05 Why declining biotech costs could transform healthcare economics.Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

@PermissionToStanPodcast on Instagram (DM us & Join Our Broadcast Channel!), TikTok & YouTube!NEW Podcast Episodes every THURSDAY! Please support us by Favoriting, Following, Subscribing, & Sharing for more KPOP talk!Comebacks: DARA (SANDARA 2NE1), HEARTS2HEARTS, EVAN, NEXA, ATHEART, ATEEZ, ENHYPENMusic Videos: HOSHI (SEVENTEEN), I-DLE, RIIZE, STAYC, MEOVV, BABYMONSTERLE SSERAFIM filled weekendLE SSERAFIM iHeartRadio TikTok event recap: YUNJIN noticing me (JOCO)LE SSERAFIM Amaze VR reviewWAYFBOYS pre-debut info plus thirst traps already!?JAY PARK x LNGSHOT tourJAY PARK vs the haters saying he is using LNGSHOT (HAYLEE has some words too)HEARTS2HEARTS Lemon Tang concepts and designs are amazingHEARTS2HEARTS Two-Three H2H Youtube Video getaway & mini games for food (as always!)CORTIS Pop-Out Lab: Soda & Mentos messy chaosBTS 13 year anniversary & talks about their free time on toursBTS releases "Come Over" digitallySTRAY KIDS new album and military questionsSTRAY KIDS FELIX & HYUNJIN popularity keeps growing after Governor BallAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

durée : 01:00:53 - par : Kymra, DJ Serom - Le Wake-Up Mix, c'est tous les jours dès 07h sur Mouv' !! Vous aimez ce podcast ? Pour écouter tous les épisodes sans limite, rendez-vous sur Radio France

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.

If you enjoy this episode, we're sure you will enjoy more content like this on The Occult Rejects.  In fact, we have curated playlists on occult topics like grimoires, esoteric concepts and phenomena, occult history, analyzing true crime and cults with an occult lens, Para politics, and occultism in music. 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Lehmann, Mark S. Malhotra, Ralph F. Goldman, Jeffrey Hopkins, and Mark D. Epstein. “Body Temperature Changes During the Practice of g Tum-mo Yoga.” Nature 295 (1982): 234–236.Benson, Herbert, Mark S. Malhotra, Ralph F. Goldman, Gregory D. Jacobs, and Jeffrey Hopkins. “Three Case Reports of the Metabolic and Electroencephalographic Changes During Advanced Buddhist Meditation Techniques.” Behavioral Medicine 16, no. 2 (1990): 90–95.Bremer, Brandon, Lorenzo Wu, Zoran Josipovic, and colleagues. “Mindfulness Meditation Increases Default Mode, Salience, and Central Executive Network Connectivity.” Scientific Reports 12 (2022).Brewer, Judson A., Patrick D. Worhunsky, Jeremy R. Gray, Yi-Yuan Tang, Jochen Weber, and Hedy Kober. “Meditation Experience Is Associated with Differences in Default Mode Network Activity and Connectivity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 50 (2011): 20254–20259.Britton, Willoughby B. and colleagues. Research associated with the “Varieties of Contemplative Experience” project on meditation-related challenges, adverse effects, and safety considerations in contemplative practice.Crowley, Aleister. Liber E vel Exercitiorum sub figura IX. In the A∴A∴ training corpus. Relevant sections include asana, pranayama, and dharana as foundational magical exercises.Dennison, Paul. “Insights From an EEG Study of Buddhist Jhāna Meditation.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 13 (2019).Fialoke, Shantala, Helen Weng, and colleagues. “Functional Connectivity Changes in Meditators and Novices During Yoga Nidra Practice.” Scientific Reports 14 (2024).Fox, Kieran C. R., Savannah Nijeboer, Matthew L. Dixon, James L. Floman, Melissa Ellamil, Samuel P. Rumak, Peter Sedlmeier, and Kalina Christoff. “Is Meditation Associated with Altered Brain Structure? A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Morphometric Neuroimaging in Meditation Practitioners.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 43 (2014): 48–73.Hölzel, Britta K., James Carmody, Mark Vangel, Christina Congleton, Sita M. Yerramsetti, Tim Gard, and Sara W. Lazar. “Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density.” Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 191, no. 1 (2011): 36–43.Kozhevnikov, Maria, Olesya Louchakova, Zoran Josipovic, and Michael A. Motes. “The Enhancement of Visuospatial Processing Efficiency Through Buddhist Deity Meditation.” Psychological Science 20, no. 5 (2009): 645–653.Kozhevnikov, Maria, John A. Elliott, Jennifer Shephard, and Klaus Gramann. “Neurocognitive and Somatic Components of Temperature Increases During g-Tummo Meditation: Legend and Reality.” PLOS ONE 8, no. 3 (2013): e58244.Laukkonen, Ruben E., and Heleen A. Slagter. “From Many to (N)one: Meditation and the Plasticity of the Predictive Mind.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 128 (2021): 199–217.Lomas, Tim, Juan Carlos Ivtzan, and Itai K. Fu. “A Systematic Review of the Neurophysiology of Mindfulness on EEG Oscillations.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 57 (2015): 401–410.Lott, James P., Richard J. Davidson, John D. Dunne, Thupten Jinpa, Antoine Lutz, and colleagues. “No Detectable Electroencephalographic Activity After Clinical Declaration of Death Among Tibetan Buddhist Meditators in Apparent Tukdam.” Frontiers in Psychology 11 (2021): 599190.Lutz, Antoine, Lawrence L. Greischar, Nancy B. Rawlings, Matthieu Ricard, and Richard J. Davidson. “Long-term Meditators Self-induce High-amplitude Gamma Synchrony During Mental Practice.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101, no. 46 (2004): 16369–16373.Lutz, Antoine, Julie Brefczynski-Lewis, Tom Johnstone, and Richard J. Davidson. “Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation: Effects of Meditative Expertise.” PLoS ONE 3, no. 3 (2008): e1897.Matko, Karin, Peter Sedlmeier, and colleagues. “Adverse Effects of Meditation and Mindfulness in Clinical Practice.” 2025.Patanjali. Yoga Sutras. Especially Book III, traditionally describing dharana, dhyana, and samadhi.Riegner, Gretchen, Fadel Zeidan, and colleagues. “Disentangling Self from Pain: Mindfulness Meditation-Induced Pain Relief Is Driven by Thalamic-Default Mode Network Decoupling.” Pain 164, no. 2 (2023): 280–291.Tang, Yi-Yuan, Britta K. Hölzel, and Michael I. Posner. “The Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 16 (2015): 213–225.Vago, David R., and David A. Silbersweig. “Self-awareness, Self-regulation, and Self-transcendence: A Framework for Understanding the Neurobiological Mechanisms of Mindfulness.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6 (2012): 296.Zeidan, Fadel, and colleagues. Research on mindfulness meditation, pain modulation, attention, and the neural mechanisms of pain relief.Slagter, Heleen A., Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar, Andrew D. Francis, Sander Nieuwenhuis, James M. Davis, and Richard J. Davidson. “Mental Training Affects Distribution of Limited Brain Resources.” PLOS Biology 5, no. 6 (2007): e138. Use for: Attentional blink, limited attention, and meditation changing how the brain allocates resources.Hölzel, Britta K., James Carmody, Mark Vangel, Christina Congleton, Sita M. Yerramsetti, Tim Gard, and Sara W. Lazar. “Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density.” Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 191, no. 1 (2011): 36–43. Use for: Neuroplasticity, repeated practice leaving measurable marks on the brain, and the “practice writes itself into the practitioner” idea.Laukkonen, Ruben E., and Heleen A. Slagter. “From Many to (N)one: Meditation and the Plasticity of the Predictive Mind.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 128 (2021): 199–217. Use for: Predictive processing, the brain as a prediction machine, meditation loosening automatic models, and the “veil” argument.Lutz, Antoine, Julie Brefczynski-Lewis, Tom Johnstone, and Richard J. Davidson. “Regulation of the Neural Circuitry of Emotion by Compassion Meditation: Effects of Meditative Expertise.” PLOS ONE 3, no. 3 (2008): e1897. Use for: Compassion meditation, loving-kindness, emotional circuitry, and training compassion as a repeatable state rather than just a moral idea.Kok, Bethany E., Kimberly A. Coffey, Michael A. Cohn, Lahnna I. Catalino, Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk, Sara B. Algoe, Marc A. Brantley, and Barbara L. Fredrickson. “How Positive Emotions Build Physical Health: Perceived Positive Social Connections Account for the Upward Spiral Between Positive Emotions and Vagal Tone.” Psychological Science 24, no. 7 (2013): 1123–1132. Use for: Loving-kindness, social connection, vagal tone, and the cautious “social nervous system” bridge.Black, David S., and George M. Slavich. “Mindfulness Meditation and the Immune System: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1373, no. 1 (2016): 13–24. Use for: Immune-system caution, inflammation markers, cell-mediated immunity, biological aging, and why this material should be framed as tentative rather than miracle healing.Burić, Ivana, Miguel Farias, Jonathan Jong, Christopher Mee, and Inti A. Brazil. “What Is the Molecular Signature of Mind–Body Interventions? A Systematic Review of Gene Expression Changes Induced by Meditation and Related Practices.” Frontiers in Immunology 8 (2017): 670. Use for: Stress biology, inflammatory gene expression, NF-kB-related language, and the cautious claim that mind-body practices may affect biology below ordinary mood.Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. A

It's time for the Season 5 finale of The LIUniverse, which means another episode of ChuckGPT where we answer our audience's most vexing questions – this time via video from our Patreon Patrons. And to help us answer those questions, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome back fan favorite guest and expert on ancient civilizations, author and educator Hannah Liu, M.Ed. As always, though, we start off with the day's joyfully cool cosmic thing: the completion of DESI's 5-year survey mapping millions of objects in the universe. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument completed the survey ahead of schedule, so there's still time to map millions more. Hannah tells us about mapping the universe in antiquity, starting with the first star catalog created by the Babylonians about 3,000 years ago. You'll hear about the Venus tablet from the first millennium BC, Chinese star charts from the Tang dynasty, and Atlas, the mythological Titan who was the “first astrologer.” Returning to the DESI survey, Chuck talks about the change in the dark energy content of the universe that we didn't really expect. Allen, our resident mathematician, talks about the velocity of universal expansion and a concept called “the jerk.” Then it's time for audience questions, and for this episode, we're doing something new. Both audience questions come from Patreon Patrons, and both are in video format so you can actually see our fans asking Chuck the questions – if you're watching rather than listening, that is. Our first question comes from Patron Lee Dubey, who asks, “Since atoms are mostly empty space, could all matter, including measuring devices, almost undetectably consume minimal space, warping the space around it? If so, could that cause gravity, and could the shrinkage cause a redshift related to dark energy?” We're not even going to try and summarize the explanation from Allen and Chuck here, except to say that the ensuing conversation includes the physics concept of “unparticles.” Hannah brings up Democritus, who, along with his teacher Leucippus in ancient Greece, first theorized the existence of atoms. Our next question comes from our Patreon Patron Lee Williams, who asks, “If we live in a simulation, is it correct to assume that there's an architect? Could there be a simulation without an architect?” Given that there's no scientific answer to either of these questions, Chuck turns to Hannah for enlightenment. While she explains that the question of whether we live in a simulation is a modern concept, Hanna discusses how humanity grapples with the questions of existence and higher powers, and why people engage with religion, magic, or quantum entanglement in the first place. In the free-wheeling, far-ranging conversation that follows, Allen brings up how we create simulations now, by creating processes and letting them run, to offer some perspective on the role of the architect. And yes, H.P. Lovecraft, “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” “Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus,” and even Spider-Man somehow make it into the discussion. And that's it for this season of The LIUniverse. We want to thank all of you for your questions, your curiosity, and your help in keeping this experiment going. As Chuck always says, “Thank you for being a part of The LIUniverse.” We hope you enjoyed this episode, and this season, of The LIUniverse. If you do, please support us on Patreon. Credits for Images Used in this Episode: Map of DESI's 5-year survey. – Credit: Claire Lamman/DESI collaboration. Roman statue of Atlas (2nd century AD). Credit: Lalupa / Creative Commons The Venus tablet recording astronomical positions for Venus dating from the first millennium BC. – Credit: FAI / Creative Commons Chinese Tang dynasty star map made around the year 700. – Credit: Public Domain.   CHAPTERS 00:00 - We Welcome Back Archaeology Expert, Author and Educator Hannah Liu, M.Ed. 02:28 - Joyfully Cool Cosmic Thing: DESI Completes Its 5-Year Survey of the Universe 04:33 - Mapping the Universe in Antiquity 12:06 - The Empty Space in Atoms, Gravity, Shrinkage, and Dark Energy 16:42 - What Are Unparticles? 22:53 - Do We Live in a Simulation? Is There an Architect?

Heather is joined by fellow author and career strategist Mandy Tang for a candid conversation about grieving the life you thought you'd have—and finding meaning in the one unfolding before you. They explore career disappointment, identity shifts, unmet expectations, fertility journeys, and the quiet grief that can accompany life transitions. If you've ever questioned your path, struggled with burnout, wondered whether you're behind in life, or felt disconnected from the future you once imagined, this episode offers a thoughtful perspective on resilience, reinvention, and how the body often reveals change before the mind fully understands it. Heather Grzych, ADLC is an American author and teacher of Ayurvedic medicine who was formerly the president of the National Ayurvedic Medical Association and the head of product development for a multi-billion-dollar health insurance company. Heather's first book, The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility, has sold thousands of copies worldwide, and her writing has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Yoga Journal, and the Sunday Independent. Her podcast, Wisdom of the Body, holds an average rating of 5 stars on Apple Podcasts and is in the top 2.5% of podcasts globally.  Mandy Tang is the author Heal Your Career Wounds: Navigating the Trauma of Today's Workplace. A career coach and holistic healer, she helps clients from Big Tech, start-ups, and the nonprofit sector bring more creativity and joy into their work lives. Her training includes an MBA in finance from Columbia, certification as a trauma-informed yoga instructor, and completion of a three-year shamanic practitioner program. Mandy runs the popular TikTok account @CareerCoachMandy with over 161K followers and a Skool community of artists and creators called the Everyday Creatives Club that meet weekly for accountability and inspiration. Visit her online at www.mandytang.co.    Connect with Heather:  Learn more at www.heathergrzych.com   Instagram.com/heathergrzych   Facebook.com/grzychheather     Read the first six pages of The Ayurvedic Guide to Fertility for FREE: https://www.heathergrzych.com    Connect with Heather to balance your health with Ayurveda: https://www.heathergrzych.com/book-online

Send us Fan Mail The rules of user discovery are undergoing a massive rewrite. This week, the Near Media roundtable features top search minds Cindy Krum, Krystal Taing, and Greg Gifford to analyze the long-term strategic impacts of Google I/O and Google Marketing Live. The panel maps out exactly how Google plans to transform its core search application into a fully transaction-based ecosystem that handles everything from discovering local venues to completing checkouts natively inside the search framework.Get an inside look at the technical mechanics behind Google's AI infrastructure, the roll-out of custom Google Spark agents, and the game-changing conversational interface of Ask Maps. We explore how these tools handle multi-variable, highly contextual natural language queries that used to break traditional local search algorithms. Tune in to explore why data privacy boundaries are fading into predictive personalization, how businesses can remain visible when traditional website traffic metrics shift, and where the future of e-commerce stands as tech platforms push for direct digital checkouts. Subscribe to our newsletters and other content at https://www.nearmedia.co/subscribe/

What if the same brain states people spend years chasing through psychedelics could be accessed through meditation alone, and in as little as seven days? In this fascinating solo episode, Darin Olien explores groundbreaking new research from University of California San Diego, Harvard University, Massachusetts General Hospital, and University of Montreal suggesting that meditation may produce brain patterns remarkably similar to those observed during psychedelic experiences. From the suppression of the default mode network and increases in neural complexity to neuroplasticity, endogenous opioids, and measurable biological changes in the bloodstream, Darin unpacks the science behind one of the most powerful, and completely free tools available to human beings. He also walks listeners through a practical seven-day protocol combining focused-attention meditation, Vipassana, breathwork, walking meditation, and loving-kindness practices designed to help cultivate greater awareness, emotional resilience, cognitive flexibility, and inner peace. What You'll Learn The groundbreaking UC San Diego meditation study and its surprising findings Why meditation may create brain states similar to psilocybin What the default mode network is and how it shapes everyday thinking How meditation may reduce rumination, anxiety, and self-referential thought The concept of brain criticality and cognitive flexibility Why post-meditation blood samples stimulated neuronal growth How meditation influences neuroplasticity and whole-body biology The differences between Samatha and Vipassana meditation What advanced monks are teaching scientists about consciousness The limitations and caveats of current meditation research A practical seven-day meditation protocol anyone can begin Why meditation may be one of the most powerful health interventions available today Chapters 00:00:03 – Welcome to SuperLife 00:00:33 – Sponsor: Alkemis and the hidden toxicity of indoor air 00:00:57 – Conventional paints, petrochemicals, and endocrine disruptors 00:01:24 – Why VOCs and PFAS may be affecting your home environment 00:01:55 – Fire-resistant mineral paints and healthier living spaces 00:02:27 – Cradle to Cradle certification and sustainable design 00:03:23 – The meditation study Darin can't stop thinking about 00:03:33 – Scanning the brains and blood of meditators 00:03:44 – Brain activity resembling psilocybin experiences 00:04:09 – The promise of a seven-day meditation protocol 00:04:22 – Psychedelics, consciousness, and dissolving the sense of self 00:04:47 – Ancient practices and modern scientific validation 00:05:23 – Why meditation research is entering a renaissance 00:05:41 – Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, and advanced consciousness mapping 00:06:00 – University of Montreal's study of monks with 15,000+ hours of practice 00:06:16 – Why psychedelics and meditation are converging scientifically 00:06:37 – What listeners will learn in today's episode 00:06:54 – Breaking down the UC San Diego retreat study 00:07:18 – Thirty-three hours of meditation, breathwork, and group practice 00:07:42 – EEG scans, blood draws, and laboratory neuron testing 00:08:05 – Reduced activity in the default mode network 00:08:24 – The science of mental chatter and rumination 00:08:50 – Blood plasma stimulating new neuronal growth 00:09:02 – Neuroplasticity and new neural connections 00:09:29 – Increased cellular metabolism and endogenous opioids 00:10:13 – Samatha vs Vipassana meditation explained 00:10:42 – How different meditation styles reshape the brain 00:10:50 – Harvard's advanced meditation consciousness studies 00:11:18 – Mapping concentration states and consciousness cessation 00:11:46 – Ancient contemplative traditions meeting modern neuroscience 00:11:50 – Important limitations of the research 00:12:05 – Why advanced monks aren't average practitioners 00:12:20 – Correlation versus causation in psychedelic comparisons 00:12:48 – What may actually be happening inside the brain 00:13:03 – Understanding the default mode network 00:13:26 – Anxiety, depression, addiction, and overactive self-talk 00:13:53 – Why meditation and psilocybin share common neurological effects 00:14:10 – Beginner studies showing measurable brain changes 00:14:28 – Brain criticality and cognitive adaptability 00:14:48 – The most surprising finding: meditation changes the blood 00:15:05 – Meditation as a whole-body signaling event 00:15:18 – Better sleep, digestion, hormone balance, and recovery 00:15:39 – Neuroplasticity, immune function, metabolism, and pain regulation 00:15:56 – Why meditation may be the ultimate free medicine 00:16:10 – Introducing the seven-day meditation protocol 00:16:34 – Sponsor break: Alkemis Paint 00:19:02 – Building a research-backed at-home meditation practice 00:19:24 – Why consistency matters more than total hours 00:19:41 – Combining focused attention and open monitoring 00:19:53 – Days 1–3: Stabilizing attention 00:20:02 – Morning focused-attention meditation instructions 00:20:34 – Evening body scan practice 00:21:04 – Preparing the brain for deeper awareness 00:21:08 – Days 4–5: Opening awareness through Vipassana 00:21:31 – Letting thoughts, sensations, and sounds pass freely 00:21:39 – Evening box breathing for nervous system regulation 00:22:01 – Why days four and five often feel more challenging 00:22:11 – Days 6–7: Deepening and integrating the practice 00:22:27 – Walking meditation and embodied awareness 00:22:52 – Loving-kindness meditation and compassion training 00:23:02 – Vagal tone, heart rate regulation, and inflammation reduction 00:23:18 – Three rules that determine success 00:23:26 – Eliminating distractions and protecting attention 00:23:36 – Why you should never judge your meditation sessions 00:24:00 – Extending the practice beyond seven days 00:24:19 – Psychedelics, meditation, and the search for transformation 00:24:51 – What the medicine always teaches: sit with yourself 00:25:03 – The wellness industry's tendency to monetize stillness 00:25:20 – Why you don't need expensive tools to transform 00:25:36 – Meditation as radical self-reclamation 00:26:02 – Meeting yourself without distraction 00:26:17 – Final reflections and closing thoughts 00:26:29 – Outro and farewell Thank You to Our Sponsors Alkemis: Go to https://alkemispaint.com/ and use code DARIN10 for 10% off your order. Manna Vitality: Go to mannavitality.com/ and use code DARIN12 for 12% off your order. Join the SuperLife Patreon: This is where Darin now shares the deeper work: - weekly voice notes - ingredient trackers - wellness challenges - extended conversations - community accountability - sovereignty practices Join now for only $7.49/month at https://patreon.com/darinolien Find More from Darin Olien: Website: darinolien.com Instagram: @darinolien Book: Fatal Conveniences Platform & Products: superlife.com New Show: Roadmap to Happiness Key Takeaway "Perhaps one of the most profound discoveries emerging from modern neuroscience is that many of the states of awareness humans have sought through substances, rituals, and external interventions may already be available within us. Meditation is not simply a relaxation practice—it appears to be a biological, neurological, and consciousness-altering intervention capable of reshaping the brain, changing the body, and transforming how we experience reality. The question is not whether the door exists. The question is whether we are willing to sit still long enough to walk through it." Bibliography/Sources: Here is the fully formatted bibliography for the "Seven Days to a New Brain" episode. It is organized by category, formatted in strict APA Style (7th Edition), and includes a direct link for every single source : Primary Studies Brewer, J. A., Worhunsky, P. D., Gray, J. R., Tang, Y. Y., Weber, J., & Kober, H. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(50), 20254–20259 . https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1112029108 Lieberman, J. M., Rahrig, H., Britton, W. B., et al. (2025). Toward a neuroscience of consciousness using advanced meditation. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews . https://meditation.mgh.harvard.edu/files/Lieberman_25_NeuroscienceAndBiobehavioralReviews.pdf Pascarella, A., Jerbi, K., et al. (2026). Meditation induces shifts in neural oscillations, brain complexity, and critical dynamics: Novel insights from MEG. Neuroscience of Consciousness . https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41287816/ Patel, H., et al. (2025). Intensive meditation retreat induces rapid changes in brain activity, blood-based biomarkers, and neurotrophic signaling. Communications Biology . https://today.ucsd.edu/story/meditation-retreat-rapidly-reprograms-body-and-mind Shinozuka, K., et al. (2025). Neuroelectrophysiological correlates of extended cessation of consciousness in advanced meditation [Preprint]. bioRxiv . https://meditation.mgh.harvard.edu/files/Shinozuka_25_bioRxiv.pdf Van Lutterveld, R., et al. (2025). An intensively sampled electroencephalography case study of advanced concentration absorption meditation (jhana) [Preprint]. SSRN . https://meditation.mgh.harvard.edu/files/VanLutterveld_25_SSRN.pdf Supporting Press Coverage & Explainers Harvard Gazette. (2026, January). Your brain on advanced meditation . https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/01/your-brain-on-advanced-meditation/ Medical Xpress. (2026, February). Study of 12 monks finds meditation heightens brain activity, reshaping neural dynamics . https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-02-monks-meditation-heightens-brain-reshaping.html PsyPost. (2026). Brain scans of Buddhist monks reveal how different meditation styles alter consciousness . https://www.psypost.org/brain-scans-of-buddhist-monks-reveal-how-different-meditation-styles-alter-consciousness/ ScienceDaily. (2026, April 6). Scientists say 7 days of meditation can rewire your brain . https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/04/260406192913.htm UC San Diego Today. (2026). Meditation retreat rapidly reprograms body and mind. UC San Diego News Center . https://today.ucsd.edu/story/meditation-retreat-rapidly-reprograms-body-and-mind Université de Montréal. (2026, January 5). Meditation doesn't rest the brain, it reshapes it. UdeMNouvelles . https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2026/01/05/meditation-doesn-t-rest-the-brain-it-reshapes-it  

On this episode we revisit Old Grand-Dad 114. We chat about waging war with the pool again, Kyle's PHD in chemistry, angering the pool fairy, five sources saying not to do this at home project, the joy of home ownership, Old PawPaw, sounding so Alabama, Nick's most recommended bottle, eating a bag of tang with a spoon, nostalgic sweet and uncomplicated, paying for the liquid, Billie Eilish, you cannot eat animals and eat animals at the same time, snapping into a Slim Jim, Charlotte's Web, where does our food come from, respect for the food we eat, what it means to be a meat eater, having one bad day, removing yourself from the factory farm part, are we hypocrites, and minimizing the suffering where we can.   Support Us On Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DrepandStone We'd love to hear from you! https://linktr.ee/DrepandStone Don't forget to subscribe! Episode 349

Welcome to another segment of the UnMind podcast and DharmaByte column. I would like to share a concern about something I have witnessed in the propagation of Zen. I am afraid that Zen in America is being categorized — in my opinion, erroneously -— as a "religion," during its second century in the West. As Zen assimilates into the volatile and increasingly violent American cultural milieu — primarily under the influence of Christian and Judaic traditions — Zen is widely, and wildly, misinterpreted as a faith or belief system. Buddhism is counted as one of the world's big four religions, we are told. But unlike Christianity, Islam or Hinduism, as well as Judaism, Buddhism is not a form of theism. I would not go so far as to categorize it as atheism — which is said to be the strongest form of theism — but that the question of the existence or nonexistence of God with a capital "G," or a pantheon of gods with lower "g's," simply does not arise. The traditional Zen saying would classify the term "god" as a "head upon a head" — a superfluous addition — on top of the reality that we all face in life. If god is what god is purported to be — i.e. omniscient and omnipresent — then there is no need to name that concept. More to the point, Zen is not based on a set of beliefs, or doctrine, but upon direct experience, whether yours or that of Buddha — who, after all, was not a Buddhist, any more than Christ was a Christian. Both were human beings, just like you. According to my poor understanding, in Buddhism, no independent, self-existent entity can be found anywhere in the universe. "Universe" is another word for naming the totality, but it is not conceived of as a conscious being, though the phrase "Vairocana Buddha" or "Cosmic Buddha," used to designate the concept, may suggest as much. An AI / Wikipedia summary says: Vairocana is the "Cosmic Buddha" or "Great Illuminator" in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, representing the ultimate, formless truth (Dharmakaya) and the source from which all Buddhas emanate. Unlike historical figures, he is a universal Buddha, often depicted at the center of the Five Dhyani Buddhas, embodying wisdom and dispelling ignorance. The "he" pronoun here is a tell — that Buddhist cultures of origin were patriarchal if not misogynistic — and any spiritual beings were cast in the mold of humanity. A section in the ancient Ch'an poem, Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind, refers to this idea of an essential truth from the perspective of personal experience, characteristic of Zen: If the mind makes no discriminationsthe ten thousand things are as they are of single essenceUnderstanding the mystery of this One-essencewe are released from all entanglementsWhen all things are seen equally the timeless Self-essence is reached Note that this underlying unity, or noumenon in today's vernacular, is a thread running through the "ten thousand things," or all phenomena, not just human consciousness. "Timeless Self-essence" may smack of the western concept of an eternal soul, but this assumption amounts to a kind of cultural appropriation, interpreting the 7th century Chinese view of "essence" as a self-existent entity, which is anathema to Buddhism. The historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, testified to the fact that he found no evidence of any such transmigrating soul, or the Sanskrit "atman," in his experience in meditation. He used an analogy to what was at that time a familiar object, a chariot — which, when disassembled and the parts laid out on the ground, no longer exists. The functional reality exists only in the assemblage. The contemporary term of art for what remained was sunyata, usually translated as "emptiness." But this term does not merely point to an absolute void, as it is often misinterpreted. Again, from our online gurus: Śūnyatā (Sanskrit) or Suññatā (Pali), commonly translated as "emptiness," "voidness," or "openness," is a foundational Buddhist philosophy referring to the lack of inherent, independent existence in all phenomena. It means all things—including the self—are empty of a separate, permanent ego, existing instead in a constant state of interdependence and change. I lean toward "openness," and note that "constant interdependence...and change" do not amount to a "state." There is nothing static about it. All things found in the universe are not things at all, but interconnected causes and conditions in constant flux — wave functions in science-speak. Likewise, aggregate reality: uni-verse, is not itself a "thing." The normal concept of "God" as a transcendent being does not stray far from this idea, except in depictions of Him or Her as human in form. As we are part of this universe, the idea that we can realize this unity with God or the cosmos permeates most religious belief systems. In Zen this proposition has the more prosaic connotation of being the truth, whether we know it or not. If God is anything, God is everything. The prospect of realization or awakening requires relinquishing our dualistic conceptions regarding this truth. Again, the great Chinese sage captures the dilemma in relatable terms: Denying the reality of things misses their realityAsserting the emptiness of things misses their realityThe more we talk and think about itthe further astray we wander from the truthStop talking and thinking and there is nothing you will not be able to know So while I maintain that Zen is not a religion in the conventional sense, what it is pointing to is the essential founding impulse of all religions, as well as philosophy: a realization of the truth of existence. Whether one interprets that realization as a religious experience or not does not change the fact of it. Again, Master Sengcan reminds us: Now there are sudden and gradualin which teachings and approaches ariseWith teachings and approaches distinguishedeach has its standardswhether teachings and approaches are mastered or notreality constantly flows "Sudden and gradual" here refers to the so-called Southern and Northern schools of Zen in China that preceded Sengcan by a couple of centuries. But they could just as well refer to today's various theistic religions with their multitude of denominations, or even to schools of philosophy, as well as theories and hypotheses of science. I italicize that last phrase, "reality constantly flows," as a simple truth, one that does not necessarily negate any of the various religious or philosophical worldviews, but amounts to a universal caveat: that whatever belief you may adhere to, it cannot possibly capture the totality of reality. Zen inquiry is said to take off from where philosophy leaves off, the latter having gotten there in a more roundabout manner. Whatever the starting point and mode of analysis, finally we are left with the "hard problem of consciousness," to co-op the phrase coined by the philosopher David Chalmers. Or as Master Dogen is said to have said, "At last we are left with ambiguity." One particular way of understanding various approaches to practice was taught by Kuei-feng Tsung-mi. Tsung-mi was a C'han master, and also the fifth Ancestor of the Hua Yen tradition in the Tang dynasty in China . He spoke of five different kinds of Zen, which are bompu zen or “usual zen,” gedo zen or ” Outside Way zen,” shojo zen or “Hinayana practice,” daijo zen or “Great Practice zen” and saijojo zen or “Easy and perfect” zen. In this sense, we could say that zen with a small “z” means simply a form of practising. Begin Here: Five Styles of Zenby Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshiZazen-ji, October 14, 1989[from the book, “Before Thinking”] Let us embrace this hard problem, and the inconclusiveness of its resolution, as we continue exploring the original frontier of Mind, and sharpening the razorblade of Zen. To make these postings a bit more interactive, please let me know if you have any subjects you might like me to address in future. My current focus is on the two underlying themes of my first and second published volumes, "The Original Frontier" and "The Razorblade of Zen," both available online. The former is a kind of user's manual for meditation, specifically of the Zen flavor, or zazen; the second is about where I see Zen fitting into the American cultural milieu as a third, alternative way, between the extremes of rationalism and science, leading to secular reductionism on one end of the spectrum, with those of theism and religion, or fundamentalism at the outer reaches on the other end. Zen lives in the middle. In these two books, both the personal and social spheres of practice-experience are engaged, separated for clarity of message. Implications for the natural sphere in the long term — if it is not already too late, in terms of climate change, for one example — I leave to you. Zen may offer our last and best hope for world peace, and saving our home planet. Implications for our understanding — or better, comprehending — the universe, and our place in it, I also leave to you. You are more likely to find your answers to the deeper questions on the cushion than off of it. But — no guarantees.

Today on The Gist, we analyze the Maine U.S. Senate race as Democrat Graham Plattner navigates a growing scandal while facing incumbent Susan Collins in a contest that tests party loyalties. Then, UC Davis law professor Aaron Tang discusses his PBS series, Breaking the Deadlock. Tang explains how his program uses high-stakes, fictionalized scenarios to force experts beyond their rehearsed talking points and toward genuine, civil discourse. Produced by Corey Wara Video and Social Media by Geoff Craig Do you have questions or comments, or just want to say hello? Email us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠thegist@mikepesca.com For full Pesca content and updates, check out our website at https://www.mikepesca.com/⁠ For ad-free content or to become a Pesca Plus subscriber, check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/ For Mike's daily takes on Substack, subscribe to The Gist List https://mikepesca.substack.com/ Follow us on Social Media:⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4_bh0wHgk2YfpKf4rg40_g⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/pescagist/ X https://x.com/pescami TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@pescagist To advertise on the show, contact ⁠⁠⁠⁠sales@amplitudemediapartners.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

This week on The KORE Women podcast, Dr. Summer Watson welcomes Mandy Tang, who is a career coach, holistic healer, and author of “Heal Your Career Wounds: Navigating the Trauma of Today's Workplace.” Mandy brings a powerful and much-needed perspective to the conversation around work, burnout, and identity. We talk about how workplace experiences can leave lasting emotional impact, why high achievers are often the most quietly affected, and how hustle culture has trained many of us to ignore what we're actually feeling. Mandy shares how burnout develops, what happens when our sense of worth becomes tied to achievement, and what it looks like to rebuild a healthier, more grounded relationship with your career. If you've ever felt successful on the outside, but unsettled on the inside, this episode will resonate deeply and offer a new way forward. You can connect with Mandy Tang on LinkedIn and on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube at: CareerCoachMandy and at: www.mandytang.co. You can also find her book on Amazon Link to Mandy's book on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Heal-Your-Career-Wounds-Navigating/dp/1608689905   Mandy's social media links: TikTok (160K) - https://www.tiktok.com/@careercoachmandy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/careercoachmandy/  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@careercoachmandy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandytang/ Thank you for taking the time to listen to the KORE Women podcast and being a part of the KORE Women experience. You can listen to The KORE Women podcast on your favorite podcast directory - Pandora, iHeartRadio, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, Podbean, JioSaavn, Amazon and at: www.KOREWomen.com/podcast.  Please leave your comments and reviews about the podcast and check out KORE Women on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.  You can also learn more about Dr. Summer Watson, MHS, PhD, KORE Women, LLC, the KORE Women podcast, KORE Business Solutions (a Virtual Assistant service) and Cross-Generational Consultation Services by going to: www.korewomen.com.  Disclaimer: Each guest shares their own experiences and perspectives and is responsible for the accuracy of the statements they make, whether in the episode or in related content. #KOREWomen #CareerHealing #BurnoutRecovery #WorkplaceWellbeing  

Sometimes, the thing we call "career stress" is actually something deeper. It is not just one hard week. Or one bad boss. Or one season of burnout. Sometimes, work leaves a mark. A layoff that shook your confidence. A toxic leader who made you question your voice. A job that trained you to people-please, over perform, stay quiet, or constantly prove your worth. And even after you leave that role… the wound can come with you. My special guest today is Mandy Tang, and she's simplifying how to heal your career wounds. Here's how. My special guest today is Mandy Tang and she's simplifying how to heal your career wounds. We tackle and simplify all aspects of it, including: What a career wound actually is, and how it's different from everyday job stress. Why patterns like perfectionism, burnout, imposter syndrome, apathy, and comparison show up so often, especially for high achievers. What it means to reclaim your voice and reclaim your peace after a toxic boss, painful layoff, or season of people-pleasing. How her "dark night of the soul" framework can help you understand where you are in the healing process. Disruption - the event where there's no turning back Dismemberment - coming back to create space with limited direction Liminal Space - the void, the in-between time Rememberment - coming back together with intention And where to begin if you feel stuck, exhausted, disconnected, or unsure how to find your way back to yourself at work. Q: Are you wanting to heal your career wounds? If yes, this one is for you. It's time to #DoTheThing! ---- Show notes available with all links mentioned here:https://www.thesimplifiers.com/posts/421-how-to-heal-your-career-wounds---with-mandy-tang

Chloe Tang began her music journey as a classically trained pianist and vocalist. But the Canadian musician yearned to be the next Avril Lavigne. When she moved to L.A. to pursue her pop music dreams, her parents weren't supportive. But the risk paid off: Dua Lipa asked Tang to open for her. Now, Tang is a fully independent artist with over 10 million streams of her music. She joins Tom Power to talk about opening for Dua Lipa, embracing who she really is in her music, and being highlighted by the Departure Festival as one of their 2026 Rising Sound Artists.

If you can afford it and love what we do, please consider supporting our show by becoming a BTT Podcast Patreon Member! Also, purchase a BTT Podcast t-shirt or two from our Pro Wrestling Tees Store!  This week's Time Stamps for our WCW Saturday Night on TBS recap from Aug 6, 1994 review are as follows (NOTE: This was recorded 4/29/2026): HOW TO GIVE OR GIFT A PATREON MEMBERSHIP: https://www.patreon.com/BookingTheTerritory/gift   Opening Shenanigans! Take Hype to Pound town! ( 0:01:41 )  Bunch of marks and stooges wasting time in the intro and Super Shock Master! ( 0:03:19 ) How's Harper? Contact the Pennsylvania Pimp (#AllenPhillip) if you want the hook-up, ALLEGEDLY for your out of state sports needs (wink wink). ( 0:05:19 ) Doc continues trying to convince that the Dodgers are the heels. ( 0:09:00 ) 5 Star Review Shoutouts! Submit a 5-star review on ApplePodcast and/or Podcast Addict and we will read it on air and give you a shoutout! ( 0:11:57 ) BTT Listener Meet-Up at Wildkat X-Rated. Get your tickets! ( 0:15:27 ) WCW Saturday Night on TBS Aug 6, 1994 recap, Duggan Debuts on Sat Night! ( 0:19:36 ) WCW Saturday Night on TBS Aug 6, 1994 recap continues and Steamboat was married how many times! ( 0:28:08 ) WCW Saturday Night on TBS Aug 6, 1994 recap continues! ( 0:32:21 ) Is that a big woman or big man in the crowd? ( 0:35:36 ) Dusty Rhodes is talking them into the building AGAIN!!! ( 0:43:32 ) WCW Saturday Night on TBS Aug 6, 1994 recap continues! ( 0:46:49 ) Doc asked Harper if he knows what a Cuck is and we get Harper to look it up and read the definition? ( 0:49:26 ) Colonel Parker tells Mean Gene that "I am the DICK-Tator"! ( 0:53:26 ) WCW Saturday Night on TBS Aug 6, 1994 recap continues! ( 0:55:49 ) Pretty Wonderful gets political? ( 1:03:29 ) WCW Saturday Night on TBS Aug 6, 1994 recap continues! ( 1:07:55 ) Don't forget to become a Patron at https://www.patreon.com/BookingTheTerritory ( 1:13:53 ) Harper use to wear Arizona Jeans and he pulled Tang? ( 1:14:57 ) Harlem Heat deserves the Rolex and Toot Toot but Doc is being anti-black. ( 1:19:17 ) Ric Flair cuts a good promo and Sherri is dressed for a funeral. ( 1:21:59 ) Ric Flair vs Terry Taylor and Hogan ruins the match. ( 1:26:04 ) TMB - TOO MUCH BOLLEA! ( 1:31:24 ) Dustin Rhodes vs Bunkhouse Buck in the main event! ( 1:34:48 ) Who gets the Rolex and/or Toot Toot award? And become a BTT Patreon member! Don't forget to become a BTT Patreon member at https://www.patreon.com/BookingTheTerritory ( 1:43:53 )  A.l. Bill Watts closing thoughts! Become a Patron at https://www.patreon.com/BookingTheTerritory ( 1:56:01 )  Harper lays out what it will take to do Ask Harper segments on the main show! Paypal him $5 per question. Harper's PayPal is, get your pen and paper out, cc30388cc@yahoo.com . Then email Harper ( ChrisHarper16Wildkat@gmail.com ) and Mike ( BookingTheTerritory@gmail.com ) letting them know you submitted $5 to Harper's paypal and he will answer your question on an upcoming show.  Information on Harper's Video Shoutout, Life and Relationship.  1. First things first, email Harper with the details of what you want in your video shoutout or who the shoutout is too. His email address is ChrisHarper16Wildkat@gmail.com . Also in that email tell him what your paypal address is. 2. Paypal him $20. Harper's PayPal is, get your pen and paper out, cc30388cc@yahoo.com .  3. Harper will then send you the video to the email address that you emailed him from requesting your video shoutout. That's it! Don't email the show email address. Email Harper. If you missed any of those directions, hit rewind and listen again.