As we start to look at the events documented in the reign of Wohodo, aka Keitai Tenno, we are going to be looking at a lot of records dealing with the southern end of the Korean peninsula through Tsukushi, or Kyushu.  This first part will look mostly at what we know about these areas from the linguistic and archaeological angles.  Specifically, we are trying to break down the notion that there was necessarily a clear distinction between the "peninsula" and the "archipelago".  Gina Barnes often refers to all of this as pen/insular, though that rarely is as clear when spoken.  The importance of this distinction is seen perhaps no more clearly than in the land of Nimna--aka Mimana in Japanese and Imna in modern Korean.  This was likelye an independent polity, and not simply an early colony of Yamato.  On the flip side, there is plenty of reason to believe that there were ethnic Wa people--even whole communiteis or polities--on the Korean peninsula.

For more, check out https://www.sengokudaimyo.com/episode-76

Rough Transcript:

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 76:  Cross-strait Relations, Part I.

Before I get too much into it, some news: we are expanding to YouTube.  I’m honestly not sure how this will work, but we are converting some of our audio into playable videos—not that the visuals are that exciting but it at least gets it out there in another format.  More information towards the end of the episode.

Now, as a reminder, we are still in the start of the 6th century.  Last episode we saw the elevation of Wohodo, aka Keitai Tennou, around the year 507.

These next two episodes we are going to look at what was going on—or at least what was recorded as going on—during the reign of Wohodo, aka Keitai Tennou.  Much of what we see in the Chronicles seems to really be more about the story of what was happening on the continent.  In particular, we are seeing a lot of pushback against Wa and the Wa-aligned states on the peninsula. Understandably, these states are all mentioned in the Chronicles as though they are directly controlled by Japan, or Yamato, but this is definitely an anachronistic 8th century view.  A lot of what we have appears to be from the Baekje Chronicles that the compilers of the Nihon Shoki were drawing from, but there is definitely a pro-Yamato spin to everything, so keep that in mind.

Also, this episode will likely be short, but that’s partly because some of this stuff is dense, and I don’t want to throw too much at you at once.  Feel free to hit me up with any questions you might have and check out our podcast website for more information in an attempt to try to keep all of this straight.

Last episode, we discussed Wohodo’s background and how he apparently came to power to head up the third dynasty of sovereigns.  During all of that, we noted how the Chronicles connect him with figures from the past, including Homuda Wake and Ikume Iribiko.  Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou, was famously considered to have been still in his mother’s womb when she supposedly went to war and brought the countries of the Korean peninsula to heel.  Okinaga Tarashi Hime, aka Jinguu Tennou, was long credited with setting up the country of Mimana, aka Imna or Nimna, as a Wa state, an extension of Yamato’s power.  However, it is much more likely that it was an existing state—possibly of Wa or at least a Japonic speaking people—and its existence is independently confirmed in numerous other records, though they don’t necessarily corroborate Yamato’s claim to it.

In this first episode, we are going to take a look at what was happening across the straits, between the southern tip of the Korean peninsula and the island of Kyushu, for the most part.  This is a fraught area of discussion.  Nationalist histories from both Japan and Korea have generally come to an uneasy truce that puts Korea and Korean culture and people on the peninsula and Japan and Japanese people on the archipelago.  This all goes back to at least World War II and the use of Jingu and the Mimana Nihonfu, or the Japanese Government of Nimna, which was used as a justification for Japan’s invasion of the Korean peninsula.

Since then, scholars have generally agreed that there was no Japanese Government overseeing territory on the Korean peninsula.  For one thing, there was no “Nihon” for there to be “Nihon-fu”—it would have been either Wa or Yamato, either of which have much different connotations.  Furthermore, even if there was a government office of some kind on the peninsula, it was likely more of a diplomatic outpost than any kind of administrative unit.  On top of all of that, we don’t’ even know where it was, other than some vague ideas.

If you go to Wikipedia, or do an Image Search for the Three Kingdoms period or just about anything we are going to discuss today, you often see well demarcated territories on the maps.  Baekje will likely start somewhere up near Seoul and encompass the entire western half of the southern peninsula.  Silla will likely be portrayed similarly, at least down to the Nakdong River Basin, where the map may show an area known as the Gaya Confederacy—sometimes even the Gaya Kingdom.  Nimna—or Mimana—is often not shown at all, unless you are looking at Japanese maps of this time.

And yet the truth is that this is all much more complex.  Most of our history for this period is based on texts.  But those texts have flaws.  The texts from the Sinic dynasties out of the area of modern China are perhaps the most reliable, but they have scant information to tell us exactly where things are, and while some states and proto-states are listed with fairly consistent names and descriptions, this isn’t universally true.  Meanwhile the Baekje annals held by the Japanese court may have been a gold mine of information, but we only get the pieces that the Chroniclers chose to include, and from what we can tell it is clear that they often changed and quote-unquote “corrected” various details in order to present the story they wanted to tell, which was meant to aggrandize the royal line of Yamato.

Finally, there are the Korean sources, such as the Samguk Sagi and Samguk Yusa, as well as the Tongkam.  These are all invaluable sources, but they are no less biased than the Japanese Chronicles.  They were compiled centuries later—even later than the Japanese Chronicles—and it seems they were drawing from different versions of events in many cases.  The fragments of the Baekje Annals that we have in the Nihon Shoki occasionally lines up with the Samguk Sagi, but often it speaks to periods where the Samguk Sagi is otherwise silent.  It doesn’t help that all of these accounts are focused on the actions of the center, and often ignore the periphery.  We don’t have written Chronicles out of Gaya—or Kara—for instance, nor any other polities that may have existed on the peninsula at this time.

It further obscures things that this was all written in a form of classical Sinitic—Chinese characters—that did not match up with the languages being used on either the peninsula or the islands.  In addition, many of the Korean sources are often using names that were deliberately changed when Goryeo took over—obscuring many local details by replacing placenames, one of the things linguists often rely on, with their own, ensuring that even if there had been another linguistic group, its legacy was largely erased from the landscape, leaving us to puzzle through the scraps.

That we are, today, reading through yet another lens also obscures what we see.  In Aston’s English translation of the Nihon Shoki he often makes the choice to render some words into the modern Korean equivalent of On’yomi, using the Korean “Chinese” pronunciation of the characters, especially where it is clear we need a phonetic spelling.  Names are often assigned a nationality, as though the modern nations of Korea and Japan already existed as linguistic entities from back in this period.

This idea, that there were Wa or Japonic states on the peninsula separate from Yamato, is worth examining a little more, and here’s where we should touch once again on language.  We talked somewhat about this back in Episode 9, where we discussed theories on the origins of the language of the Wa. Current scholarship seems to indicate that there was a Japonic—or proto-Japonic—speaking people on the Korean peninsula prior to the arrival of the Korean language.  This may not have been the only language on the peninsula, and we certainly know of a variety of ethnicities that show up briefly in the record, but I’m not sure how we would even be able to tell what languages such people spoke, as Korean eventually moved along the peninsula, north to south, taking over and pushing out any indigenous languages.  The state of Baekje may have had Japonic speakers, beyond those Wa who were recruited into the court and military structure, but it was likely largely speaking a language similar to Goguryeo, given their ties through purported Buyeo ancestry.  Likewise there is some evidence in Silla for a Japonic substratum, though even they had largely adopted the language used by Goguryeo and Baekje by the 6th and 7th centuries.  So even if the dominant language of the main states on the Korean peninsula was largely Korean and not Japonic, it certainly seems reasonable that there were some Japonic speaking holdouts on the peninsula, and perhaps they even identified with the larger Wa culture.  I’ve seen less evidence for the lands of Nimna and the independent lands of the Kara confederacy, but that’s hardly surprising given the paucity of sources for what was going on in that region.

At the very least it seems reasonable that these lands, which were at one end of the standard trade routes between the peninsula and the archipelago, would have a special relationship with Yamato and the people of the Japanese islands.  Kara, and the many lands there—Kara, South Kara, Ara, and more—are identified as independent and having their own sovereigns and rulers.  Nimna, likewise, is noted as having a “king” at one point in the narrative, and continually shows up as separate, in ways that lands like Tsukushi, Kibi, and Izumo do not.  This is mirrored in the way that the records of the Song also list Nimna and Kara as separate lands, as opposed to those on the archipelago.

Key here to realize is that language is not culture is not ethnicity.  Just because someone speaks a Japonic language that does not make them Japanese—take, for example, the old kingdom of Ryukyu, which was an independent entity for centuries.  There is a false dichotomy presented by the idea that all of the peninsula must speak Korean and all of the archipelago must speak Japanese that concludes that if there are any Japonic speaking people on the mainland then they must, obviously, be a part of Yamato’s growing confederacy.  Similarly in the other direction.  However, remember, that the immigration went fairly clearly from the peninsula to the archipelago, not vice versa.

Evidence of this might exist with one more location that we’ll introduce this episode, and that is the land of T’amna, known today as Jeju Island.  T’amna is interesting—it was an independent state off the coast of the Korean Peninsula, and while it became a tributary state to the larger Korean court, the kingdom of T’amna retained local independence up through the start of the 15th century.  So when we talk about the Three Kingdoms on the peninsula, even as the old states of Kara were absorbed into Silla and later Goryeo, T’amna retained an independent character up until the Joseon dynasty.

Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have much written down from T’amna itself, at least not in the early centuries.  Later on, legends claim it was founded an impossibly long time ago, but it enters the historical record some time around the Han dynasty.  The Samguk Sagi identifies early relations with Baekje by 476, and it seems solidly in the records from at least the 5th century onwards.  Indeed, it pops into the Nihon Shoki fully formed.

Of interest, currently, besides the fact that it shows up in the Nihon Shoki at this time, is that recent investigations into the linguistics of placenames and other features of the island suggest that Tam’na or Jeju  had a language different from much of the Korean peninsula, and that language may very well have been a Japonic or proto-Japonic language, along with many other groups in the peninsula.  Indeed, even the name “T’anma” is sometimes expressed, early on, as something more like Tanmura, or possibly Tanimura.  While it eventually adopted the Korean language that spread from the north and was taking over the peninsula, it may have retained some of these underlying Japonic elements for some time, especially if we assume that the spread of Korean took place from the Buyeo people through Goguryeo and Baekje southward, with the southeast of the peninsula containing the last hold-outs.  It would make sense that an isolated island would retain pre-Korean traits for much longer.

Certainly the island had close ties to Baekje, and it seems to further support the idea that there were Japonic speaking people on the Korean peninsula.  Furthermore, there is no evidence that I’ve seen that would make it part of the larger Yamato confederation.  No doubt they interacted, as did all the various states of this period, but there is nobody I have seen making the claim that Yamato somehow claimed ownership of the island state of T’amna.

Given all of this, a better approach might be to see culture from the peninsula to the archipelago as more like a color chart.  While there are centers, such as Baekje’s capital of Ungjin, Silla’s capital at Gyeongju, and Yamato’s capital in the Kinai region of Honshu, we don’t have hard lines of control between any of them, and rather we have gradations of difference.  Those differences aren’t always easy to see on the periphery, where our sources tend to peter out.

Another source that we need to consider, besides the textual and linguistic, is archaeological.  I admit I am not prepared to get into a full-blown archaeological discussion of the Korean peninsula as compared with the Japanese, and this is an area where a lot of work is still being carried out.  Still, I think it is useful to consider some broad strokes.

First off, we can use archaeology to see some of the similarities and differences between different groups.  We can see a difference in Silla pottery styles, even as they influenced the sueki ware in Japan that was likely the product of peninsular people in the Kawachi region.  Armor from tombs in the archipelago has clear ties to armor found in the region of Kara, around the Nakdong River Basin.  This all makes sense as Kara would have then been at one end of the easiest path across the straits, island hopping via Tsushima to Northern Kyushu and beyond.

There are some areas, though, where the archaeological record causes us to pause.  For example, In the late 5th to early 6th century we even see examples of keyhole shaped tombs in the Yongsan River Basin, though with some very peninsular affectations, suggesting that it wasn’t just a whole-cloth importation of culture from the islands.   As we’ve discussed, keyhole shaped tomb mounds on the archipelago are often interpreted as indications of the spread of Yamato influence, but in this case we have to wonder. 

In the southwest of the Korean peninsula, along the Yeongsan River, that area is usually described as part of Mahan and later Baekje, but archaeologically, there are some distinct features in Southern Jeolla—or Jeollanamdo—particularly in this region, around modern Gwangju.  Unfortunately, very little in the Chronicles from either side of the strait really gives us many textual clues for what was going on there.  We can assume they had their own small states or proto-states, but they are often just lumped in with the larger Baekje.  And so we are left with conjecture.

What we do know is that sometime in the late 5th century, people in Jeollanamdo started building keyhole shaped tombs with local construction techniques that otherwise look very similar in shape to those from the archipelago.  Inside, however, the coffins follow Baekje patterns, to the point of using nails that would have been imported from Baekje, to the north.  At the same time there are Wa style long swords and magatamas—the comma shaped jewels—Silla crowns, and Baekje prestige goods.  They also had local style prestige goods as well.

So, it’s a fascinating mix of cultural influences – but scholars have no idea who these people were.  Were they refugees from the archipelago, trying to create a new polity on the continent?  Were they originally from Baekje, but just enamored of the style on the archipelago?  Or perhaps even some combination of both?  Maybe even none—perhaps they were local magnates who were borrowing ideas from all of their neighbors.  In all, about 14 of these tombs have been discovered in and around Jeolla, and they were all built in the late 5th to early 6th century—so within the lives of only one or two generations.  And then they disappear.  There may be some clues in Northern Kyushu, however, where there have been found some tombs that share some of these Jeolla characteristics, and they have been found near settlements that appear to show evidence of ondol, a peninsular underfloor heating system that was quite popular on the peninsula, but which otherwise never caught on in the archipelago—or so we thought.  But in some of these settlements in Northern Kyushu, which have traditionally had relatively close ties with sites across the straits, it seems someone may have at least been giving it a try.  Unfortunately, just as Jeolla gets little mention in Korean sources, Northern Kyushu, or Tsukushi, often gets minimal attention by the Japanese written sources.

I bring all this up just to re-emphasize that there is a lot more going on than we have written down, with entire generations and cultural shifts happening.  This comes into play in this period as we are going to get a lot of different actors coming onto our stage, sometimes with just a single line and then nothing more.  The histories that are taught in classes will often streamline all of this, pruning what we don’t know so that we can focus on the threads that are most important.  To a certain extent, I’m forced into this as well, but keep in mind that there is a lot going on, and a lot yet to discover.  Hopefully archaeological discoveries will continue to advance our knowledge of this period, and we need to be careful about being too wedded to our interpretation of the textual sources, alone.  Furthermore, just because we know the outcome, today, realize that in that moment there was potential for dramatic shifts and changes.  States that may have seemed like the next big thing may have suddenly collapsed, like a well-hyped movie of a popular franchise that bombs at the box office, largely forgotten. This could be due to any number of reasons: war, natural disaster, or just general misfortune.  And without clear indications, we may never really know the reason.

What we can see is that the Chronicles indicate is this was a period of regional instability. Baekje had been defeated and was reconstituting itself to the south, in Ungjin, but it would take until the early 6th century before things started really looking up again.  Yamato’s last Great King to have much influence appears to be Wakatakeru no Ohokimi, aka Yuuryaku Tennou, in the late 5th century, and the chronicles then detail a succession of sovereigns whose reigns were notably short and often focused on Yamato, rather than the larger world.  See Episodes 60 to 70.

And then of course we get our current ruler, Wohodo, aka Keitai Tennou, coming in from out of the blue entirely.  Yamato was hardly stable, and when the center was in chaos, it traditionally means that the periphery had a freer reign to innovate and grow and try their own thing.  And so it is not uncommon to see strongmen rise up and try to challenge major powers.  Elites who are on the outs in the various courts may flee and in so doing, bring their own stamp of legitimacy to places on the outside, as well as bringing with them ideas of state formation and governance.

This is the environment we likely find ourselves in around the beginning of the sixth century, and much of the action appears to be focused on the Baekje annals in the Nihon Shoki at this point, which themselves seem largely focused on what was happening in what we assume is the southeast corner of the Korean peninsula.

We’ll talk about the various lands, such as Ara, Panphi, T’amna, and more.  Much of this is focused on the smaller polities, though within the context of the manuevering between Baekje, Silla, and Yamato.  That other states often have a seemingly equal—or even moreso—seat at the table could be an indication of just what kind of state the various powers were in.  Even if they were ascendant, they did not have a free rein to just do whatever they wanted, and some of these local elites were clearly posing a challenge to their own ambitions.

Soon enough, the situation would change.  Spoiler alert, but the largest state in the Gaya confederacy, Geumgwam Gaya (?? Kara?), which may have just started to rise as an independent kingdom, would soon fall to Silla, but that was not necessarily a foregone conclusion, something we should remember as we watch events unfold.

With this background, we can get into the actual stories from the texts in our next episode, where we’ll talk about what the Chronicles themselves have to say about all of this, primarily focused what was going on across the straits, between the archipelago and the peninsula.  There is the continued story of what was going on with the various states of Nimna and Kara, with Yamato’s ally, Baekje, and their greatest rival, Silla.  We’ll touch on the Iwai Rebellion, when Kyushu tried to cut off Yamato’s access, and more.

Until then, thank you for listening and for all of your support.  If you like what we are doing, 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 Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at [email protected].  It is always great to hear from people and ideas for the show.

Also, as I noted up front, we are starting to put videos up on YouTube.  So far these are older episodes, and it does take some labor to convert them—and I have over 70 episodes to go through, so this will likely take some time.  Still, if that works for you, you’ll be able to find us and subscribe at Sengoku Daimyo on YouTube—just look for the Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan playlist.

In addition to that, I’m looking for how best to get transcripts out there for you all.  I’d like to make sure that our podcasts are accessible, and I know that is an issue without transcriptions available—and some of the original scripts for the first few episodes seem to be missing, so there’s that.  If anyone knows of a good Speech-to-Text option (preferably free, but we’ll pay if need be), I’d really appreciate it.

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