Getting into the reign of Ikume Iribiko (aka Suinin Tennou) and we'll briefly cover the state of the Korean Peninsula as we will deal quite a bit with the stories of travelers who are said to have come over at this time--Sonaka, Tsunoga, and Ame no Hiboko, possibly all one and the same person or possibly combinations of several different people.

For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-30

Rough Transcript

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 30:  Yamato and the Continent.

Last episode we finished up with the reign of Mimaki Iribiko, who ruled from the Mizugaki Palace, who would later be named as Sujin Tenno, and whose entry and accomplishments may or may not be conflated with Queen Himiko.  We are assuming that his story should reasonably be set somewhat closer to the present than the Nihon Shoki puts it, so we are assuming about the mid-3rd century CE, which puts his successor somewhere towards the latter part of the third century.  This is still the very start of what we know as the Kofun period.  Mounded tombs—in particular these round keyhole shaped tombs—would come to dominate how we think of this era – as evidenced by the name of the period.  But it wasn’t as if that was all that was going on, it is simply the most visible.

Today we are going to get into the start of the story of Mimaki Iribiko’s successor, Ikume Iribiko—perhaps better known today as Suinin Tennou.  First I think it is useful to take a look at the historical and archeological setting and revisit just what is going on outside Japan at this time period, beyond just what is set out in the Chronicles.  Ikume Iribiko is the first sovereign in the Chronicles with a significant interaction with people from the peninsula, and so to better understand that we should probably take a look at what is going on over there.  After all, when last we took a look at the Korean Peninsula, the Lelang and Daifeng Commanderies of the Wei dynasty was going strong, situated as they were in the middle of the peninsula, somewhere around the areas of modern Pyongyang and Seoul, were a significant presence.  Meanwhile, much of the rest of the southern peninsula was still populated by the people of the Samhan, the three Han of Mahan, Pyonhan, and Jinhan.  These would eventually become the kingdoms of Baekje, Silla, and the Gaya confederacy.  North of the commanderies was Goguryeo and Buyeo, which were already well established kingdoms by the time Himiko’s envoys sent their first tribute to the Wei court.

Unfortunately, however, this period, just after Himiko, is somewhat of a blank spot, historically speaking.  While we have the chronicles, these are collected from fragments of oral stories.  Meanwhile, the continental accounts from this time period go silent, and with good reason.  The Han Commanderies like Daifeng and Lelang, first established in 108 BCE by the Han court, and Yamato’s primary conduit to the Wei court had become a bit pre-occupied.  As you may recall from our episodes on Himiko and her envoys, the Han Commanderies were administrative units established by the Han and later dynasties to help provide some measure of control over the frontier regions—in this case the Korean peninsula.  Administrators were sent from and supported by the courts in their mother country, and they acted as a stand-in for many of the regular interactions with the people in the border regions.  In some cases that may have been receiving tribute and trade, or even arbitrating local issues.  In others, it may have involved chastising those that encroached on the territory the commanderies were responsible for.  And of course they facilitated the actual missions with the court in Luoyang.   Unfortunately, after Himiko’s death, we merely get a glimpse of the continued fortunes of the Wa on the archipelago, and this is probably due, at least in part, to the fact that the Wei and its commanderies had more important matters to focus on.

To begin with, to their north was the relatively mature state of Goguryeo, whose leaders claimed descent from the older Buyeo state..  In 238 Goguryeo helped the Wei destroy the Liaodong commandery, which also helped the Wei gain control of Lelang and Daifeng, which had previously been administered by the Gongsun.  Only four years later, though, this relationship soured, as Goguryeo continued expanding towards the south, seeking arable land along the Yalu river, which drew the ire of the Wei, who saw that as their territory, setting off a series of conflicts which would lead to the destruction of the Goguryeo capital at Hwangdo, two years later.  It would take almost a half century for Goguryeo to completely replace its  

Meanwhile, to the south of the commanderies, other kingdoms were coming of age.  The state of Baekje, which was also led by nobles from the same Buyeo lineage as the Goguryeo royal family, had been growing among the people of the Mahan on the western edge of the Korean peninsula, and in the mid-third century they were also consolidating into a full-blown Kingdom under the reign of King Goi.  In fact, all three Han of the peninsula—Mahan, Pyonhan, and Jinhan—were moving more and more from loose settlements to independent city-states and even kingdoms, paralleling the development seen on the archipelago at this time. Besides Baekje, we also see the early state of Silla—not fully come into its own, but likely the most powerful of the various states in the area known as Jinhan at this time.  And then the area of Byonhan had already grown into the various confederated states that would be known as Kara or Gaya, with elite trade goods found from at least the Early Han Dynasty.  Although there are some Korean sources that claim that a Kingdom called “Kara” formed around 42 CE, archaeological evidence seems to show most of the consolidation in the 3rd and 4th centuries, around the same time that the other polities in the peninsula and the archipelago were taking shape.

No doubt these developments would have kept the commanderies busy by themselves, but there was more, as there was also trouble on the homefront.In 249, the Wei court saw a coup d’etat by Sima Yi, one of the co-regents, and the next decade and a half saw a struggle within the court, which included murder, assassinations, executions, and more.  In 258, they were dealing with a rebellion, and they suffered a military defeat at the hands of a resurgent Goguryeo at a place called Yangmaek.

The rest of the century continued to see bouts of war and chaos.  In 266, Sima Yan ascended the throne and ushered in the new Jin dynasty, and the next two decades would see the Jin state consolidate their power over most of the ethnic Han cultural areas in what we tend to think of as China.  During this time, though, there is a decidedly reduced influence from the now Jin-run commanderies, and between 276 to 291 the Jinhan and Mahan polities would start to send missions directly to the Western Jin court—18 missions with 2 to 30 polities participating in each one.  Previously these missions would have stopped at the commanderies, so clearly something had changed.

In 286, Buyeo, Goguryeo’s mother-state, was attacked and destroyed by the Xianbei Murong tribe, and the Buyeo people fled south, taking refuge in the friendly states of the Korean peninsula.  And then, in 291, the Western Jin was embroiled in its own internal struggles as this year begins over a decade of chaos known as the Disorder of the Eight princes, during which the Western Jin would lose their homeland in North China, further removing them and their support from the remnants of the commanderies on the peninsula.  The commanderies would eventually fall to Goguryeo—first Lelang in 313 and then Daifeng in 314, which would spawn a whole new series of cascading effects along the peninsula.  But we’ll talk about those at a later time.  For now, let’s stick to the end of the 3rd century.

Now, granted, this chaos was expansive, and occurring over the course of the last half of the 3rd century and into the beginning of the 4th, so it was not as if there was constant fighting at all times.  Still, I think we can see two things.  First, we see that the Wei and the Jin were embroiled in court intrigue, power struggles, and civil unrest—Yamato and that far flung archipelago were hardly going to be first and foremost in anybody’s mind, let alone amongst the Chroniclers.  Furthermore, the peninsula itself was undergoing a major cultural shift, as the weakened power of the Commanderies came at a time when city-states began to flourish, leading to the development of Kara, or Gaya, and what would be known as the Three Kingdoms:  Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla.  Just like Yamato, these polities were still building up their social and administrative structures and flexing their political independence and might.  One could probably assume that there were others as well, but just like Kibi and Izumo in the archipelago, they were conquered or absorbed without significant mention in the historical chronicles eventually written by the victors.

Of all of these different polities on the Korean peninsula, I do want to spend some time focused on one in particular, and that is Kara.  This is often referred to in the Japanese chronicles as Mimana, and some even translate it as Imna—though I don’t have any evidence that name was ever actually used.  This area is somewhat problematic, historically, and to understand why, we are going to have to flip ahead a bit.  First, though, let’s talk about the name.

So the Nihon Shoki gives it to us something like this:  In the reign of Mimaki Iribiko there was a man who came from the mainland and landed on the shores of Kehi Bay in Koshi—modern Tsuruga Bay, in Fukui Prefecture.  They say he had horns on his head, and while that may sound like we are dealing with an oni or some other kind of monstrous being, this appears to have been shorthand in the Sinitic Chronicles for a person of royal lineage.  Sure enough, when someone inevitably asked who he was he announced himself as the son of the King of Great Kara, named Tsunoga Arashito, aka Ushiki Arishishi Kanki.  Both Kanki and Arashito appear to be various continental ranks or honorifics.

He had come, he told the people, to offer his allegiance to the sovereign of Yamato.  And so he sailed off across the sea.  He must have taken the same route as the earlier Wei embassies, crossing to Tsushima, Iki, and then sailing up along the coast of Kyushu, until he eventually put in at the land of Anato, by the straits of Shimonoseki—you may know it by its later nomicker:  Nagato, aka Choushuu, and it looks like Choushuu’s reputation for being a rabble rouser didn’t just start in the 19th century.  For when Prince Tsunoga put in at Anato, and told the people there what his purpose was, he was led to the lord of that place, one Itsutsu Hiko.  Itsutsu Hiko claimed the he was the king and there was no other, so Tsunoga may as well just stop right here.  Tsunoga could apparently tell that he was lying however, so he got back on his ship and continued along the Japan Sea Coast, passing along Izumo until he finally arrived in Kebi Bay, where even today you’ll find legends and stories about him, as the name Tsunoga apparently became Tsuruga, but there still is a Tsunoga district in Tsuruga, said to be named for him.

Having finally arrived at Kehi, the people told Prince Tsunoga that he was too late—the sovereign, Mimaki Iribiko, had passed away, but they could still take him to Yamato where Mimaki Iribiko’s son, Ikume Iribiko, was set to succeed his father.  And so Prince Tsunoga went down and must have been having a good time, because he stayed for some three years, at which point the new sovereign, Ikume Iribiko, asked him if he would like to return home—apparently, back in those days, when you went all that way for a visit, you didn’t just turn around and go home after a couple of weeks, but you lingered a while.  There is also the possibility that Prince Tsunoga was acting as some kind of ambassador.  Whatever the situation, three years was a long time, and he said that yes, he would like to go home and see his family again.  And so Ikume loaded him up with red silk and sent him back, but not before making a suggestion that, since he had come to Yamato because of Ikume’s father, Mimaki Iribiko, maybe the Prince could honor him when he went back by renaming his own country to Mimana.

And at that point, the Prince of Kara, Tsunoga Arashito, left and headed back to where he had come from, his hold loaded with the precious cargo.  And though he returned, it wasn’t without incident, because apparently his country was attacked and robbed by the fledgling state of Silla, inciting enmity between the two—but we’ll get into that, later.

For now I want to talk about what this story means for us, and why it is problematic.  You see, for a long time—and particularly in the late 19th and early 20th century—this area of Mimana was described as a Japanese “colony” on the peninsula, which fueled some Japanese claims that expanding their territory and even sovereignty over Korea was just a natural expansion of the Japanese state into areas it had previously controlled.  Indeed, Korea has twice been ravaged by Japanese forces—once in the late 16th century and then in the early 20th century, and a lot has been made of this particular account, of Kara and Mimana, and the idea that culture “flowed” from Japan to Korea, rather than vice versa.

In fact, as early as the 9th century we find texts embellishing the details of this story, including the claim that not only did Tsunoga go back and rename his country after Mimaki Iribiko, but that he took along a Japanese prince, Shiotare Hiko, who brought an army and set up a colonial government on the peninsula.  That is then quoted as fact, almost as if it is part of the original chronicles themselves but I can’t at all condone it as anything approaching historical fact as we know it.  I ran into this in my own studies for this episode, and it looks like this is actually recorded in the Shinsen Shouji Roku, an early Heian period record designed to catalogue and explain the origins of various family names.  However, I can’t stress enough how much this seems like a complete fabrication.  While the Yamato court would certainly get involved in wars and fighting on the continent, there is no archaeological evidence to suggest that they had a permanent, Dazaifu-like pseudo-capital on the mainland, and especially not this early in their history.  But this is a great example of how history gets used and misused over time.

I think one of the most telling bits of evidence here as regards the truth of the matter likely sits in the very name of this confederacy:  Gara or, in Japanese, Kara.  Even today, this name is still used, but not to refer to things as Korean, but rather to refer to things as Chinese.  The kanji for the “Han” and the “Tang” dynasties, are often read with a kun’yomi of “kara”, and “Kara-fu”, or “Chinese Style” is often used to refer to various things that have a Chinese “feel” to them.  Even in Okinawa we see this kanji used to refer to the Kara-te, or Chinese Hand, versus the Okinawa-te method of fighting.  That kanji was later changed to the homophone meaning “empty hand”, largely for marketing purposes.  Of course, all of the “Chinese” learning that came to the islands initially came through the Korean peninsula as intermediaries, a fact that is often glossed over in Japan, but I just can’t let go of the fact that it is not Kan, or Tou, or any such thing that is used by the Japanese, but rather it is the name of this confederation—Kara—which comes to encompass anything that comes over from the continent.

And so regardless of the political ties, there must have been a fair amount of intercourse between these various regions.  This appears to be borne out in the archaeology of the region around the Nakdong river, at least near the coast, where Yayoi style pottery and burial pots have been found.

In fact, it is not that implausible that the people in the area of Gara—today pronounced Gaya—were speakers of some form of peninsula Japonic or its descendants, as posited by Vovin and others.  Unfortunately, we don’t’ have any concrete evidence that I’ve seen.  But if they were, indeed, speaking something similar to the Japanese then, assuming Mimana is related to a peninsular word in the first place, perhaps that was closer to the pronunciation of the time.  Unfortunately, it is hard to say.  The peninsula was an extremely multi-cultural area by all accounts—even more so than the archipelago at this time.  It would not be surprising for there to be myriad languages, and in fact the early accounts of the Samhan do appear to reference that the Mahan, Byonhan and Jinhan did, indeed, speak separate and mutually unintelligible languages.

Nonetheless, I see no evidence here to suggest a Japanese “colony” in Korea.  Rather, it does appear that the archipelago has long enjoyed relations with the peninsula, particularly that southern area of Pyonhan that later developed into the confederated states of Kara or Gaya.  In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that among all of these confederated states we see on the peninsula, Kara was the first to really emerge, historically speaking.  There are even a series of royal tombs that show up in the mid-3rd century at Taesong-dong in modern Kimhae city demonstrating some level of social stratification, and this is happening around the same time that the rounded keyhole tomb mounds are spreading through the Seto Inland Sea down to Northern Kyushu, though I should note that these tombs are of a considerably different construction.

It is not too big a leap to suggest, I think, that these states or chiefdoms of the Kara confederacy had long had an affinity with the states of the archipelago, and may, in fact, have been in alliance—perhaps even federation—with them at various points throughout history.  But I remain careful not to state that they were, in fact, subjects of Yamato—certainly not at this point.  Heck, even the story of Tsunoga shows us that Yamato rule was far from absolute, and describes a situation that we would almost expect to find in the latter part of the third century, especially with the death of the Yamato sovereign:  various other polities no doubt flexing their own muscle and attempting to show that they were just as important as, if not more so, than the upstarts in the Kinki region.  After all, hadn’t the regions of Northern Kyushu been settled and in contact with the continent for much longer?  Why should Yamato suddenly have so much sway.

At the same time, it seems to also speak to this idea that Yamato, especially through its allies in Koshi, could still have traded with the mainland through its Japan Sea waterways, which had also made Izumo quite prosperous.

So I’m willing to believe that Yamato had friends on the continent, though whether they were anything more than trading partners at this point remains to be seen.  Furthermore, many of these accounts may be exaggerated based on later incarnations of the polities involved.  It would be like talking about the early United States as a continent-spanning world superpower in the 18th century instead of a loose collection of states that had just won their independence from one of the true superpowers of that time.  It is easy to see America today and assume that the Manifest Destiny was just that—destiny, but one should remember that there has been quite a bit of growth and change—and that’s only in the past 250 years or so.

By the way, this story about Tsunoga Arashito appears to have either influenced or ended up being influenced by a few other stories from this reign or even later in the Chronicles, all about various individuals coming to Yamato from the Peninsula.  For instance, before his entry in the Nihon Shoki there is a quick blurb about a man from Mimana named Sonaka Shichi—or in modern Korean Cheulchi—who asked permission to return home in the second year of Ikume Iribiko’s reign.  When he left, he was presented with one hundred pieces of red silk as a gift for his king, but he was waylaid by Silla, kicking off fighting between Silla and Kara.

In fact, that’s given as the primary version of this story, and it is perhaps the most believable in its brevity.  It is quite possible that Sonaka was Tsunoga’s actual name, but the imagery of Tsunoga as a description of a man with horns on his head was much easier to remember.

In another version, Tsunoga’s story appears to be tied to the story of Ame no Hiboko, who is described more as a foreign deity than simply a man.  But to really get the connection, it may be helpful to first hear one of the alternate stories in the Nihon Shoki which goes something like this:

So Tsunoga Arashito was there, living the princely life in his own country, when one day he went out and about with an ox that was laden down with implements of husbandry—which seems to suggest that it had everything you would need to raise, work, and eventually slaughter an ox.  Tsunoga must not have been keeping a close eye on it, however, for one day, while he wasn’t looking, the ox suddenly disappeared.  Well Tsunoga rolled a successful tracking roll, found the animal’s footprints, and followed it across the terrain until the tracks ended at a certain village—which one, we are not told, because that seems to hardly be important.  It was just a certain village, which is apparently where all the strange stuff happens.

So anyway, an old man saw Tsunoga and must have recognized that he was looking for his ox, so he told the Prince what had happened.  Apparently the village headman, seeing a fat, juicy ox wander in with all of the implements right there had made a snap decision—the people of the village would slaughter the creature, butcher it, and eat it.  After all, finders keepers.  Besides, if the owner did show up, they would simply offer to pay him back.  The old man suggested to Tsunoga that the best thing he could ask for from this village was their sacred deity.

Yup, that’s right, the old man suggested that the Prince trade up from an ox to a god.  Now you might suspect that the people of the village would have balked at this, but apparently not.  In that village—that certain village—they apparently worshipped a white stone, which Tsunoga was given in exchange for his ox.  Of course, I’m sure he was probably wondering by this point if he’d been had.  He may as well have had a sack of beans in exchange for his ox—heck, the beans you could at least eat, and maybe even plant.  But he had his “payment”, such as it was, so he took the white stone back to his palace.

Once home, he put the sacred stone in his bedchamber—maybe to scare the monsters away?  I don’t know—and he laid down to go to sleep.  But no sooner had he done so then the stone turned into a beautiful woman—so *definitely* better than a sack of beans, then.

Tsunoga was quite enamored with this woman, and wished to be united with her, but before that, he had some business to attend to.  If this were a comedy I imagine that the very beginnings of their getting to know you sessions, a servant walked in with urgent business, forcing Prince Tsunoga to take his leave, no doubt mouthing the words:  “Stay here, don’t move—I’ll be right back.”

Unfortunately for Tsunoga, it wasn’t to be.  Just as had happened to his ox when he left it alone, he came back to find that his beautiful bride-to-be had vanished.  And so Tsunoga asked his wife… oh, wait, did I mention that Tsunoga was *already married*?  But then again, monogamy was not necessarily a thing, especially not for the royals.  Still, it seems a mite bit strange to go ask your wife if she saw where the hot young thing that had materialized in your bedroom had gotten off to.

But his wife apparently was fine with all of this—or perhaps she wanted to send him on a wild goose chase.  Whichever it was, she told him that the woman had fled east, and since Kara was already about as far east as you could go on the peninsula without figuring out how to walk on water, Prince Tsunoga got himself a boat and headed towards the archipelago, and from there we pretty much know his story.  As for the young maiden who emerged from the white stone, apparently she apparently made it to Naniwa, modern Ohosaka, where she was recognized right off as a kami and worshipped at Himekoso shrine.  Though the shrine has moved over the years, apparently you can still go see it, or the one in Kusaki in the land of Toyo, where she is also worshipped.

Now the Kojiki actually provides this incident again, but it is placed not in the time of Ikume Iribiko, but in fact some time after in the time of Prince Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tenno, who probably ruled in the late 4th or early 5th centuries.  That account is about Ame no Hiboko—or the Sun Spear of Heaven—a decidedly non-Korean name.  But it nonetheless claims he was a son of King of Silla, who came to the archipelago, and his story goes something like this.

In the land of Silla there was a swamp that was called Agunuma.  Every day there was a woman—a commoner, so we aren’t given her name—who would go to this swampy area to take a nap in the middle of the day.  And while she was lying there, napping, she was apparently taking part in an early version of heliotherapy, because the account says that the rays of the sun shone on her genitals like a rainbow.  A man—another commoner, so another nameless person in this story—learned about this and would watch her sunbathing, thinking it odd behavior.  Though of course, did he bother to ask her about what she was doing?  Of course not.  Rather he just sat there and watched her each day, because that is totally fine and normal and not at all creepy, am I right?

Anyway, one day this creeper noticed that this mid-day heliotherapy treatment was having an effect, because the woman became pregnant and gave birth—but not, as one might assuming, to healthy little baby.  No, instead, she gave birth to a red jewel.  Creeper—and that’s just going to be my name for him now—finally approached her at this point and asked if he could have the jewel which she had just given birth to, which was apparently a normal and regular thing to do, because she just said “okay”, and gave it to him, and then exited the story.

Creeper, on the other hand, wrapped the jewel up and wore it around his waist for good luck.

Now apparently Creeper didn’t just sit around watching women take naps in swamps all day long.  For his day job he would travel through the mountain valleys with his ox loaded up with food and drink for the workers out in the rice paddies.  He was out making his rounds one day when this prince, Ame no HIboko, saw him and had him arrested, making the claim that he was going up into the mountains to kill and eat the ox.

Again, I’m not sure exactly what’s going on here.  First off, why would he care that someone was going up into the mountains to kill and eat the ox unless somehow the oxen were seen as a communal resources, which may have indeed been the case at the time.  Certainly in Japan, oxen were more often seen as working animals and not food animals, and only really in modern times did beef become a major part of the Japanese diet, such that now we have everything from Yoshinoya to Wagyu beef.  But I digress.

So even if it was a crime to kill and eat oxen, did the prince really think that was Creeper’s plan?  I mean even if he went up into the mountains, what was he going to do if he slaughtered a whole ox?  It isn’t like he had another ox to bring it back with him, so unless he was feeding a village up there, then it wasn’t like he could sneak all that meat back down.  And then, to top it off, what about all the food that the ox was laden down with?  Were those just toppings for the main course?

I’m sure that Creeper used all of these excuses and more as he tried to explain to the Prince what was going on, but the Prince was hearing none of it.  So finally, the Creeper decided to resort to the one argument that seems to have been used since time immemorial:  Bribery.  He took the jewel out from around his waist and offered it to the prince.

Now, again, I don’t know what we are supposed to think was going through Prince Ame no Hiboko’s mind at this point.  I mean, he was going to arrest the man for taking an ox up into the mountains, because that could only mean that he was going to slaughter it, but he had no questions whatsoever about why the same man was carrying a valuable jewel around with him.  He just pocketed the jewel and sent Creeper on his way

When Ame no Hiboko got back from his wanderings and extorting the populace, he took out the red gem he had acquired and placed it by his bed side.  Just like the white stone in Tsunoga’s tale, the red gem transformed into a beautiful maiden, and Ame no Hiboko, not one to look a gift maiden in the mouth, immediately married her and made her his chief wife.  And from that point on, he was living the good life.  Apparently this jewel-maiden was quite the cook, and she would make delicious meals for her husband.  But as is so often the case, Ame no Hiboko started growing arrogant and taking her for granted.  When he started to get verbally abusive with her, she put her foot down.  “You don’t deserve me.” She told him, “So I am going to my ancestral land.”  And with that, she secretly left the Prince’s palace and got on a small boat by which she sailed off across the sea, eventually landing in Naniwa, in Modern Osaka.  There she was worshiped at Himekoso Shrine as the lady Akaru Hime.

Well Ame no Hiboko quickly realized that he had let a good thing slip through his fingers, and so he went after her.  He sailed his boat after hers but was stopped by the kami of the crossing—which I suppose to meant he couldn’t make it through the straits at Shimonoseki.  So he ended up following the Japan Sea cost—just as Tsunoga had done, and eventually arrived in Tajima, over on the other side of Honshu, where he eventually settled down and married Mahetsumi, daughter of Matawo of Tajima.  Their descendants, five and six generations later, would be Okinaga Tarashi Hime—aka Jingu Tenno—and Homuda Wake—aka Oujin Tennou, and we can talk about just what significance that has when we get to their stories.

By the way, when he came, Ame no Hiboko apparently brought 8 articles with him, with names that sound very much like Heavenly Treasures.  This was the Jewel-treasures, two strings of beads, as well as the wave-raising scarf, the wave-cutting scarf, the wind-raising scarf, the wind-cutting scarf, as well as the mirror of the offing and the mirror of the shore.  These were kept at a shrine and worshipped as the 8 kami, or 8 spirits, of Izushi.

The Nihon Shoki also speaks of Ame no Hiboko, but doesn’t exactly repeat the story of Tsunoga Arashito.  Rather, Ame no Hiboko is described as a Silla prince who arrived in the third year of Ikume’s reign—really just a year after Tsunoga had returned back to his homeland.  Ame no Hiboko is said to have brought several items, though these differ from the Kojiki account.  In the Nihon Shoki he brings with him a Habuto Gem, an Ashidaka gem, a red-stone Ukaka gem, an Izushi short sword, an Izushi spear, a sun-mirror, and a kuma-himorogi, which might indicate some kind of portable shrine enclosure but it really isn’t clear.

Apparently, in this version of the story, Ame no Hiboko didn’t go straight to Tajima, but instead anchored his ship in the land of Harima, a province between Yamato and Kibi.  Indeed, the Harima Fudoki even records his arrival, talking about a “foreign deity” that arrived, and it even talks about him fighting with the Great God of Iwa—apparently a local kami of Harima Province—as well as Ashihara Shiko’wo, the Ugly Man of the Rice Plains, aka Ohokuni Nushi himself.  It is actually Ame no Hiboko with whom Ohokuni Nushi goes up to the top of a mountain and they have a contest, throwing out kudzu vines to determine who gets what territory.  Ohokuni Nushi’s vines land with two in Tajima and one in Harima, while Ame no HIboko’s vines all land in Tajima, so he goes to live in Izushi, in Tajima, according to the Fudoki.

In the Nihon Shoki, the sovereign, Ikume Iribiko, gets nervous about this ship sitting off the coast of Harima, and he decides to send two people to find out what is going on.  These are Harima Ohotomo Nushi—the Ohotomo Lord of Harima—and Nagaochi, whom you may remember was one of the people Mimaki Iribiko had designated to handle various spiritual issues, along with Ohotataneko.  When these two came upon Ame no Hiboko and asked just what he was doing there, he explained that he was a son of the King of Silla, just as in the other story, and because he had heard that Yamato was ruled by a sage monarch—and there we go again with the Chroniclers taking great pains to spin the royal family in the best, most continental light possible—anyway, because he had heard Yamato was ruled by a Sage Monarch, Ame no Hiboko had given up the throne to his younger brother, Chiko, and came to offer his allegiance to Yamato, including tribute in the form of the eight items he had brought.

Pleased with the tribute, Ikume offered to let Ame no Hiboko stay in Shisaha in Harima, or even in Idesa, in Awaji, but Ame no Hiboko declined either.  He would rather wander the land until he found just the kind of place he was looking for to set up shop.  And apparently the court let him do just that—or else perhaps they had no real way to stop him.  Anyway, it is said he went up the Uji river, to the village of Ana, in the province of Ohomi, then through the province of Wakasa, and then westward until he reached the land of Tajima.  There he married Matowo—given here as the daughter and not the parent—the daughter of Maetsu Mimi, or perhaps Futo Mimi.  Anyway, they still have him as the father of Tajima Morosuke, the lineage that is given in the Kojiki as being ancestors of the later sovereigns.

Later in the Nihon Shoki, Ikume Iribiko would ask to view the treasures, just as he had done with the treasures of Izumo.

So where to begin with all of this?  Well, first of all, Ame no Hiboko’s name shows no connection to a peninsular name at all, let alone the name of a person from Silla.  It is possible that it could be a translation of a Silla name, but the use of “Ame no” or “Ama no” seems suspiciously like we are talking about a deity.  Furthermore, I would be surprised if Silla were sending people to Japan this early.  It is certainly possible that there were still people migrating to the archipelago at this time, and that the struggles of Ame no Hiboko with Ashihara Shiko’wo could reflect some ancient tensions between the settled people of the archipelago and newly arrived immigrants.  Certainly it would not be surprising if the Himekoso Shrine in Naniwa was connected with immigrant populations, as there were certainly continental transplants that moved into the region of modern Ohosaka, eventually.  In fact, in the 5th century, immigrants from Kara would come and bring their distinctive form of pottery, kicking off the production of the famous Sue-ware pottery.  Similarly, groups of immigrants would land across the archipelago, and may have brought various technologies or even kami, with them.  By the time the Chronicles were written, the stories of just how these people had arrived may have been lost in stories of “time immemorial”, which really is just a fancy way of saying that it happened so long ago nobody could remember it anymore.  For some of us, that might mean last Tuesday.

And you can see how things could get conflated.  If we assume that Tsunoga, aka Sonaka, really did arrive around this time from Kara, you can see how his story could get conflated with the story of other people who came in from the Korean peninsula.  And so it becomes just as good as any place to put the story.

It does seem like the story of Ame no Hiboko has special significance to later events.  Yes, there is the current viewing of the eight kami of Izushi—which I assume is code for some kind of ceremony of subjugation.  I can’t help but think of the practice of “dojo busting”—the idea that one could challenge a rival dojo and take their sign as evidence if you won, basically humiliating them and forcing them to close up shop.  While perhaps not phrased as a humiliation, taking a province’s heavenly treasures, which I assume were part of the ancient regalia used in ceremonies over who could rule, would certainly have been a major symbolic gesture that the power to invest others was in the hands of the court at Miwa and nobody else.  Given that interpretation, once can certainly understand why Izumo no Furune was so loathe to send the Izumo treasures to be viewed.

In fact, even when Kiyo Hiko, Ame no Hiboko’s great-grandson—and, yeah, so there were apparently at least  three generations since Ame no Hiboko had arrived, another thing that makes the date of his story suspect—even when Kiyo Hiko brought the treasures, he apparently hid one of them.  It was apparently a sword, which he hid in his clothes.  Although since this isn’t an episode of Highlander it must not have been that long—probably no more than a dagger, rather than what we might think of as a sword.  Unfortunately for Kiyo HIko, as he and Ikume Iribiko were out drinking, the sovereign noticed the dagger under Kiyo Hiko’s clothing.  In a fit of embarrassment, Kiyo Hiko admitted that it was, in fact, one of the divine treasures, and so it, too, was added to the storehouse.  And that right there tells us that yes, this was more than just “viewing” these treasures.  However, in this case, there seems to have been a bit of divine intervention, because after it had been put in the storehouse, when the Sacred Treasury was checked, soon thereafter, they found that the sword was missing.  They sent messengers to Kiyo Hiko, who admitted that the sword had, all of a sudden, appeared to him that evening, but then it had disappeared in the morning, and Kiyo Hiko had no idea where it was at the moment.  Well, Ikume Iribiko decided that if the sacred sword wanted to be somewhere else, then who was he to stop it, and he let the matter drop.  That said, I can’t help but wonder if Kiyo Hiko had pulled some kind of Ocean’s 11 con job and kept the sword, the last piece of the Izushi regalia.  If he did, we certainly don’t hear about it.

There is a story that the sword later showed up at Awaji Island, where the people erected a shrine and worshipped it, but that is hard to verify.

And with that, I think we’ll take a break.  We’ve quickly covered some of what’s going on over on the mainland and we are seeing the rise of these various continental powers, who I do want to give a better treatment of at some point, when I feel I can really do it justice.  We obviously won’t be as in depth as we have been with these chapters, but we can at least give a little more attention to the history of each of these peninsular polities.  However, I felt that it would be good to have some background as we are starting to see interaction between those polities and Yamato—though you can judge for yourself how trustworthy those accounts really are.

Of course, because of all this, we’ve really only barely touched on Ikume Iribiko, but we’ll have a chance to dive into more of his story next episode—and maybe even beyond that, we’ll see.  The court politics really heat up in this Chronicle, with assassination attempts, armed rebellion, burning castles, and more.  Of course, we also see some of the legendary beginnings of classic Japanese culture, such as the first ever sumo match, the appearance of oranges in the archipelago, and the founding of the Grand Shrine of Ise.  All of that still to come!

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That’s all for now.  Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.