Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan

Happy New Year! This is our 2025 recap episode. In this case, we actually are recapping a fair bit more than just the year, going over the previous evolution of the Yamato state up to the period of the Great Change, or Taika, which we covered this past year. There's a lot more that we expect to get into this next year, and this will hopefully tee us up for what is to come.

For more, including a full list of our previous references, check out: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-newyear2025

Rough Transcript

Shinnen Akemashite! Happy New Year and Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is the New Year’s Recap episode for 2025!

It’s that time again: we are going to look back at what happened in the episodes this year. That was only episodes 101 to 117—we’ll skip the travelogue episodes for the time being. This covered the years of the early to mid-7th century, from roughly 613 to 659. That is easily within the lifetime of a single individual, and yet a lot was going on.

At the start of this year, we were at the height of Soga power. In 2023, we covered how back in 587, Soga no Umako had wrested power away from the powerful Mononobe clan, defeating Mononobe no Moriya. As you may recall, the sovereign known to posterity as Jimmu Tennou was the descendant of the Heavenly Grandchild known as Ninigi no Mikoto, at least according to the Nihon Shoki. The Mononobe clan claimed descent from none other than Nigi Hayahi, the Other Heavenly Grandchild, whose offspring were said to have been defeated by Jimmu.

You may recall that scholars generally consider the story of Jimmu, and the nine sovereigns that immediately followed him, as almost certainly a later addition to the story of the royal lineage. So when did the story of Nigi no Hayahi’s defeat enter the picture? And was its inclusion perhaps related to the defeat of the Mononobe by the Soga family? A family that successfully intermarried with the Royal House, themselves, such that all later sovereigns would trace their ancestry back to the Soga house?

Of course, under Soga dominance we saw the rise of figures like the Soga descended Kashikiya Hime, aka Suiko Tenno. During her reign, major reforms were carried out, Buddhism became fully established by the State, and ties with the continent were strengthened.

Politics would continue to be dominated by Soga, even after the death of Soga no Umako and Kashikiya Hime, with Soga no Emishi taking up the mantle of Prime Minister, working closely with his son, Soga no Iruka. The Soga family was so entwined with the politics of rulership that the main rivals of the Soga were... the Soga. That is to say different Soga-descended lineages, like that of the Prince Umayado, aka Prince Shotoku. Rather than supporting Umayado’s son, Prince Yamashiro no Oe, Soga no Emishi backed another candidate to the throne, Prince Tamura. , of the royal Okinaga lineage. Tamura came to power as Jomei Tenno, but there is little doubt that Soga no Emishi was the one in control.

Later, when Tamura passed away in 641, Yamashiro no Oe continued to be passed over. In fact, Soga no Emishi supported the ascension of Tamura’s wife, Takara hime, over Yamashiro no Oe, and there is evidence that he supported a prince known as Furubito no Oe as the Crown Prince and eventual successor. All of the evidence—which, to be honest, is rather biased—suggests that the Soga family were setting up a series of puppet rulers who would do their bidding, or at least be pliable to their suggestions.

There must have been some pushback, though, especially when one considers how strong the cult of Prince Shotoku, aka Umayado, would eventually become. One imagines that Prince Yamashiro was another pole around which those who opposed the Soga family could rally. After all, he was the son of Crown Prince Umayado, and likely had just as much of a claim as Tamura and his children. And so, to counter this threat, Soga no Emishi’s son and successor, Soga no Iruka, took matters into his own hands.

In a brazen display of the violence of court politics, Soga no Iruka had Yamashiro no Oe accused of plotting against the throne and took an army to arrest him—no doubt in the hope that the prince would resist. Eventually they cornered Yamashiro and his family, who committed suicide rather than submit.

This attack was likely targeted to take out the rival to the Soga family’s preferred Crown Prince, Prince Furubito no Oe, but rather than quell any dissent, the move seems to have enflamed the passions of those who wanted to see an end to the Soga house. Those passions took particular root in none other than Furubito no Oe’s younger brother, Prince Naka no Oe. Together with the support of his uncle, Prince Karu; the head of the Nakatomi house, Nakatomi no Kamatari; as well as another scion of the S...

Reform, Rebellion, and Rats! And all in less than a year! This episode we continue to look at the Taika era and the reforms that bear the era's name. We are still covering, though, just the first year or so from the start of the era--through 645 and very early 646. And yet there is a lot going on, some of it as part of the reforms and some of it just the normal international and domestic politics.

For more check out https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-109

Rough Transcript

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this episode 109: Radical Reforms, Resourceful Rats, and Precarious Princes.

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Prince Furubito no Ohoye looked out over the changing autumn leaves of Yoshino. Where the mountains had been painted pink in cherry blossoms just seven months earlier, the mountains were now covered in garments of red, yellow, and orange. Seven months. A lot could happen in seven months. Seven months ago, Prince Furubito had been in line for the throne. His main contender for the position was dead, and he had the support of the most powerful men in the court. Then it had all come crashing down in an instant.

After the turmoil of the court earlier in the year, life in the countryside was no doubt a welcome respite. The former Crown Prince had narrowly avoided sharing in the fate of his Soga relatives, who had been killed in front of him.

Furubito was no stranger to the literally cutthroat politics of the day. Soga no Iruka had killed Yamashiro no Ohoye, son of Shotoku Taishi, ostensibly to place Furubito on the throne, no doubt with the expectation that the Soga descended prince would be easier to control. Furubito himself had not been entirely out of the loop on that whole thing, either, specifically advising Iruka that he should make sure to send subordinates to do the dirty work and keep himself out of harm’s way.

Now Furubito’s seemingly untouchable supporters, Soga no Iruka and his father, were, themselves, dead at the hands of Furubito’s younger brother, Prince Naka no Ohoye. Their mother, Takara, had immediately abdicated, and Prince Furubito was suddenly in the crosshairs, potentially standing between his murderous brother and the throne. And so he took himself out of the picture and retired, becoming a monk at a temple in Yoshino, a mostly wild area south of Asuka and the traditional heartland of Yamato, where sovereigns of the past had sometimes gone to get away.

Furubito had spent the last several months there in the mountains, out of the political center, but that didn’t mean he was completely on his own. Not everyone was against him, and he still had people bringing him news. He may have retired from the world, but he wasn’t without his resources. And there were those still in his camp, who thought he should be on the throne. They just had to keep it under wraps until it was too late for Prince Naka and his cohorts to do anything about it.

So, with that little snapshot of life in Yoshino, let’s get into it. We’re talking about the Taika era, so let’s first start out with a recap of last episode and some things to keep in mind, and then continue with the story of the reforms, looking at what else was happening in that first year, as well. We’ll talk about the diplomatic missions from the Korean peninsula, the edicts focused on the Yamato elite and the clergy, as well as the strategic use of the change in the capital. We’ll also address just what happened with the “other” crown prince, Furubito no Ohoye.

First off, let’s quickly recap: So last episode we started talking about the Taika era and the Taika reforms. In particular, we looked at how the governance of the archipelago had changed—as best as we can tell, at least, from the evidence available to us—and we looked at some of the very first edicts that went out. According to the Nihon Shoki, things started with the appointment of the Ministers of the Left and Right, the Sadaijin and the Udaijin. As later institutions were created, these ministers would each take a portion of those institutions into their portfolio, effectively dividing the management of the government. Although the Sadaijin, or Minister of the Left, was considered senior to the Udaijin, the Minister of the Right, at least in later years, it should be noted that this system would prevent, at least on paper, a single prime minister from taking the reigns of the entire government, as the Soga seem to have largely done. Presumably this meant that the sovereign, as head of state, would have the ultimate authority over the realm.

Still, from the very get-go, we see that there are positions set up outside of this dynamic. For one thing, you have the creation of the seemingly nebulous “Naidaijin”. This is interpreted as the Minister of the Interior, meaning inside the royal house, and it was first...

This episode we will finish up the travels of Xuanzang, who circumnavigated the Indian subcontinent while he was there, spending over a decade and a half travelings, visiting important Buddhist pilgrimage sites, and studying at the feet of learned monks of India, and in particular at Nalanda monastery--a true center of learning from this period.

For more, check out our blogpost page: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-122

Rough Transcript

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 122: Journey to the West, Part 3

The courtyard at Nalanda was quiet. Although hundreds of people were crowded in, trying to hear what was being said, they were all doing their best to be silent and still. Only the wind or an errant bird dared speak up. The master’s voice may not have been what it once was—he was definitely getting on in years—but Silabhadra’s mind was as sharp as ever.

At the front of the crowd was a relatively young face from a far off land. Xuanzang had made it to the greatest center of learning in the world, and he had been accepted as a student of perhaps the greatest sage of his era. Here he was, receiving lessons on some of the deepest teachings of the Mahayana Buddhist sect, the very thing he had come to learn and bring home.

As he watched and listened with rapt attention, the ancient teacher began to speak....

For the last two episodes, and continuing with this one, we have been covering the travels of the monk Xuanzang in the early 7th century, starting around 629 and concluding in 645. Born during the Sui dynasty, Xuanzang felt that the translations of the Buddhist sutras available in China were insufficient—many of them had been made long ago, and often were translations of translations. Xuanzang decided to travel to India in the hopes of getting copies in the original language to provide more accurate translations of the sutras, particularly the Mahayana sutras. His own accounts of his journeys, even if drawn from his memory years afterwards, provide some of our most detailed contemporary evidence of the Silk Road and the people and places along the way. After he returned, he got to work on his translations, and became quite famous. Several of the Japanese students of Buddhism who traveled to the Tang dynasty in the 650s studied under him directly and brought his teachings back to Japan with them. His school of “Faxiang” Buddhism became known in Japan as the Hosso sect, and was quite popular during the 7th and 8th centuries. Xuanzang himself, known as Genjou in Japan, would continue to be venerated as an important monk in the history of Buddhism, and his travels would eventually be popularized in fantastic ways across East Asia.

Over the last couple of episodes we talked about Xuanzang’s illegal and harrowing departure from the Tang empire, where he had to sneak across the border into the deserts of the Western Regions. We then covered his time traveling from Gaochang, to Suyab, and down to Balkh, in modern Afghanistan. This was all territory under the at least nominal control of the Gokturk empire. From Balkh he traveled to Bamyan, and then on to Kapisa, north of modern Kabul, Afghanistan. However, after Kapisa, Xuanzang was finally entering into the northern territories of what he knew as “India”, or “Tianzhu”.

Here I would note that I’m using “India” to refer not to a single country, but to the entirety of the Indian subcontinent, and all of the various kingdoms there -- including areas now part of the modern countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The Sinitic characters used to denote this region are pronounced, today, as “Tianzhu”, with a rough meaning of “Center of Heaven”, but it is likely that these characters were originally pronounced in such a way that the name likely came from terms like “Sindhu” or “Induka”. This is related to the name of the Sindh or Indus river, from which India gets its name. Xuanzang’s “Record of the Western Regions” notes that the proper pronunciation of the land should be “Indu”.

In Japan, this term was transmitted through the Sinitic characters, or kanji, and pronounced as “Tenjiku”. Since it featured so prominently in the stories of the life of the Buddha and many of the Buddhist sutras, Tenjiku was known to the people of the Japanese archipelago as a far off place that was both real and fantastical. In the 12th century, over a thousand stories were captured for the “Konjaku Monogatarishu”, or the “Collection of Tales Old and New”, which is divided up into tales from Japan, China, and India. In the famous 9th or 10th century story, “Taketori Monogatari”, or the “Bamboo-Cutter’s Tale”, about princess Kaguya hime, one of the tasks the princess sets to her suitors is to go to India to find the begging bowl of the Buddha. Records like those produced by Xuanzang and his fellow monks, along with the stories in the sutras...

This episode is a bit different. Whereas we've been looking primarily at the archaeological and historical evidence, this episode we look at the linguistic evidence--language--and what it tells us.

For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-9

Rough Transcript

(Auto-transcription courtesy of listener, Zach)

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 9, The Language of Wa. Now in the last few episodes we've talked about the arrival of rice and agriculture in general to the archipelago. We discussed how that led to the formation of the Yayoi culture, which remained distinct from the Jomon people still covering most of the archipelago. We also talked about the material culture that the Yayoi brought with them, not just different pottery styles, but metal technology, bronze and iron. There's one more thing that they brought, one of the key things that likely set this new culture apart from the original Jomon, and that was its language, which evidence suggests was likely an early Japonic language, an ancestor of modern Japanese. Now the story of the Japanese language and where it comes from is still something of a mystery, though one that various historical linguists have been working on, so I feel confident that I can at least give you a glimpse into some of the thoughts and theories that are out there, as well as help put to rest a few of the more commonly held theories that were once in vogue but have proven problematic over time. But before we get into that, I guess I should ask the most basic question of all. Why do we care? How does this help us tell the story? Well for one thing, language is how we communicate. It isn't just how we communicate, it actively shapes how we think about and perceive the world, and when we get into the historical period, that history will largely be written in Japanese. Language is often central to identity, you know, those things that let people know who they are, what they belong to. It's shaped by their environment and what is around them, and it in turn reinforces and influences how people think about themselves and others. For example, in English, we tend to think in terms of egocentric directions, that is directions centered on the subject or object of our conversation. So forward, backward, up, down, left, and right. We also have words for cardinal directions like north, south, east, and west, but we tend to use these when thinking in larger terms. For local directions, we usually say something like "go down the street and take a left." In Tlingit, they have words that have evolved specifically for where the language evolved. Words for instance, specifically indicating whether you are going towards the shore or away from it. "Ik" and "yik." Which is understandable as much of Tlingit Ani, the Tlingit homeland, is along the coast of the Pacific Northwest in the Alaskan panhandle. And these would be handy directions, regardless of whether you are actually going north, south, east, or west. So you might tell someone to "go shoreward" or "go inland" and there is even a variant for if you are on the water, vice on the land. Meanwhile in the language of the Guugu Yimithirr of Northeast Australia, they tend to use the cardinal directions, north, south, east, and west, rather than egocentric directions like left, right, forward, and backward, even when talking about something that is close at hand. Rather than saying "give me that book that is on your left," they would likely say something like "give me the book that is northeast of you." As a consequence, its speakers are constantly keeping track of where they are and have developed a remarkable ability to tell directions. In Japanese, we can see some similar differences with English, from the different levels of politeness and honorifics when speaking with people, to just the sheer number of words for different types of fish. These are clues about values Japanese society then puts on different things. You can even see in some instances where Japanese may not have originally made distinction, but one now exists because of borrowing from Chinese, for example. A good example here, to make something, whether a chair, a sword, a garden, or a boat, one might use the word "tsukuru." However, when written with the Chinese characters, the same word, tsukuru, shows a difference between small things like the chair and the sword, and larger projects like building a boat or a garden. Language is both shaped by its environment, and in turn it shapes its speakers, giving those of us who speak it a reference for how to view the world. And this is one reason why many people work so hard to preserve their individual languages, despite external pressures to conform, while on the other hand, many immigrants may endeavor to adopt the language of their newly chosen culture in order to better assimi...

This episode we are covering the end of the reign of Naka no Oe, aka Tenji Tennou. We cover the events in the Chronicles, including the death of Nakatomi no Kamatari, the creation of the Fujiwara family, the destruction of Goguryeo, and the continued development of the Baekje refugees.

For more, check out the podcast blog at: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-128

Rough Transcript

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 128: Immigrants, Princes, and High Officials.

There was a pall over the house, despite the visiting royal retinue creating something of a stir,. While craftspeople were still hard at work repairing damage from the lightning strike only a few months earlier, that wasn’t the reason for the low spirits. Rather, the house was worried for their patriarch, the Naidaijin, Nakatomi no Kamatari. He had fallen ill, and despite all the pleas to the kami and the Buddhas , it seemed the end might be near.

And so even the sovereign himself had come. Kamatari was not just a loyal official, but a close friend of the sovereign, someone who had been there since the beginning. And so we can imagine how Naka no Oe felt. He may have been the sovereign of Yamato, but he was still a human being, visiting his friend of some 30 or so years, knowing that for all of the power that he held, there was nothing he could do against the ravages of time and disease.

The year is 668—Naka no Oe has moved the capital to Ohotsu, on the banks of Lake Biwa, and has formally assumed the throne.

This episode we are going to cover the last several years of Naka no Oe’s reign. In contrast to last week’s dive into Yamato science, this week is going to be a bit of a grab bag, looking at what was going on in Yamato and talking about what was recorded in the Chronicles.

And for the most part, the entries for the rest of the year 668 are fairly normal, and yet there are some oddities...

For instance, in the fourth month we are told that Baekje sent Mitosapu and others to offer tribute. And any other time that would be just a normal thing. Except that at this point in history, Baekje was about as going a concern as a parrot in a Monty Python sketch. So if the Kingdom of Baekje was no longer a thing, who was it that was sending the tribute? Most likely it was the Baekje communities in exile living in the archipelago. Remember how many of them had settled around Biwa and in 666, two thousand Baekje people were settled somewhere in the East. These immigrants were still being supported by the Yamato government, who were basically subsidizing their settlement for the first three years, during which time they would be expected to make it into a permanent settlement.

Based on the way the Chronicles talk about it, these early Baekje communities sound like they were maintaining a kind of kingdom in exile. With many immigrants from Baekje living together in proximity, they were likely keeping their own groups, with their own language and traditions, at least for now. It would be interesting to know if there were specific Baekje settlements that have been identified through the archaeological record.

That said, we definitely see Baekje’s mark on the archipelago: Physically, there are the Baekje style castles, and various temples following Baekje style layouts. Of course there were also continental building styles, but some of that was shared across multiple cultures at this point, and one should consider how much Baekje influence might have been found in things that we later see as Japanese.

Additionally, Baekje nobles were involved in the court, often given court rank based in part on their rank in Baekje, though it wasn’t quite equivalent. Still, in time, some of the nobles would trace their lineages back to Baekje nobles and princes.

Speaking of princes and Baekje, on the fifth day of the fifth month of 668 —a day that would come to be known as Ayame no hi, or Tango no Sekku, one of the major days of court ceremony—Naka no Oe went out hunting on the moor of Kamafu, known today as Gamou district, near Kanzaki, where 400 Baekje people had been settled. He was out there with the Crown Prince, his younger brother, aka Prince Ohoama, and all the other princes and ministers. A grand outing.

A month later, however, tragedy struck. One “Prince Ise” and his younger brother died on consecutive days. While this was undoubtedly a blow to the court, the interesting thing for our purposes – which also highlights the challenge of interpreting the Chronicles is that we aren’t exactly sure who this is referring to. It’s not the first time we’ve seen this title: we first see a “Prince Ise” show up around 650, during the presentation of the white pheasant that ushered in the Hakuho era, but we later see that that individual had passed away in 661. We...