CW:  In this episode there will be some mention of slavery, as well as reference to wars and warlords.

We continue our journey into the culture of the Wa, looking at the social conventions and society.  The past may often be a foreign country, but there are also a lot of things that look familiar.  We'll look at how society was structured as well as the rituals we know about to give us more perspective on this time in history.

For more go to: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-12

Rough Transcript

(Auto-transcription courtesy of listener, Zach)

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 12, Society and Ritual. Now last episode, we looked at the Chinese accounts and how to get from the lands owned by China to the ancient Hua states, including the country of Yamato, home of Queen Himiko. We also looked briefly at the lives of the people and what they were like. We talked about what they wore, what they ate, and a little bit about society. You know, it still seems striking to me how much you can see of the roots of later Japanese culture in these early descriptions, while simultaneously recognizing just how different it was from what we know of today. This episode, we'll continue to look at the society of Queen Himiko's Hua, especially in light of how it compares with later Japanese culture. Now one of the things that may be particularly intriguing, at least I think is particularly intriguing, is this idea of a relative equality between the genders. The idea that the sovereign could be either a king or a queen without apparent distinction, and that women and men both had an equal voice at the table when it came to deciding things for the community. In fact, Himiko appears to have ascended to the throne following a disturbance, but before that, there was a man on the throne. There was also another man who followed her, and then a woman after that, and we'll talk about that later. For now, I just want to note that gender does not appear to be a prerequisite to political authority. And let's just think about that for a bit. This is something we're really going to have to remember when we get into the Japanese Chronicles, which were definitely written from the point of view of a patriarchal society. Still, stories from the Chronicles and the Fudoki, or local gazetteers, provide us some stories that show that both men and women yielded power and authority in ancient times. Now despite the apparent relative equality between the sexes on a political level, that doesn't mean that everyone was on the same level, or that there weren't gendered roles within society. Society was still stratified, with deference being shown by those in the lower castes of society to those in the upper caste. I feel I should note here that modern Japanese society also has its own forms of stratification, if you didn't already know. Even the Japanese language emphasizes the difference between inside and outside, as well as those who are higher or lower, socially speaking. Now by inside, I mean those whom you share a social grouping with, whether a club, a family, or even your co-workers. There's a different level of formality used with those who are part of your group, and those who are outside of it. Then there are those who are ranked higher or lower on the social ladder, and this can be situational. Within a family, the parents are higher than the children, while at work your bosses higher than you are. I mean, that could be the same for a teacher or other group leader. Even amongst your colleagues, there might be differences in seniority based on, for instance, when someone joined the group, their age, or other factors. Now while much of this has mellowed out from the days of the Edo period, when everyone would have been keenly aware of his or her overall position in society, it's still something that is kept in mind and part of general etiquette that people learn. There are even different words for the same thing depending on two individuals' relative positions. Now this is all a highly simplified description of a very complex social system, and I don't want to get too deep into it, but it does point out the importance of rank and position in society, and that appears to be something that was important back in the time of Himiko as well. It may not have been the same rules, but the concept was still there, and it would develop over time. Now it's thought that this idea of group identification also contributed to what may have been one of the oldest practices of social identification known in the archipelago, one we've seen in the archaeological record, and that's dental ablation. You remember that? It's the practice of knocking out teeth for various ritual purposes, like we saw back with Minatogawa 1. Well dental ablation was apparently practiced throughout the Yayoi period, and not just by "jomon" people. In fact there appear to be different patterns used by various Yayoi settlements and by people of immigrant descent. It was still going on, particularly in various coastal regions, but we don't really notice it being commented on as a feature of the Hwa people, at least not in the Chinese chronicles. So either it wasn't noticed by the various ambassadors, or it just wasn't considered important enough to comment on. I mean it is possible that the chroniclers themselves edited it out for some reason. I mean I also wonder if they just thought people had lost their teeth naturally. They may not have noticed the patterns, and if they didn't see it occurring, you know, didn't see someone taking a rock to someone's mouth and banging out the teeth, well they may just have assumed that a lot of people were missing teeth. And it doesn't appear to have been universal. I mean we don't find every skull missing teeth. So what does that mean? Well whatever it means, its absence in the written record whilst being present in the archaeological one is a bit of a mystery, and one we may never solve. So what would make people knock out perfectly good teeth? I mean I know early dental practices were pretty rough, but this was something more than that. And it didn't happen all at once. That is, you didn't just go into the local dental oblationist and say "hey, I'd like you to remove these six teeth today." Rather it would be something that happened over time. I mean studying just how teeth were removed, anthropologists have suggested this likely had something to do with your position in the group, and it might have marked different points in time. I mean usually certain teeth are knocked out first at an early age, and then later other teeth are removed. Based on the number of finds, a general progression can be established of which teeth were removed in what order. Interestingly, there are at least two different patterns that have been found in various communities, and it's been suggested that this may indicate people who are from the local area versus people who were considered outsiders. In other words, creating a physical indication of inside and outside. Whatever it meant exactly, it was clear that people were marking themselves in different ways, creating a physical and permanent difference that would mark them as similar or apart. It may seem extreme, but many people have had similar rituals, from tattoos to scarification to other means of permanently marking themselves. Now besides inside and outside, there also appears to have been a vertical hierarchy of sorts, with differently ranked individuals. It was unclear how many ranks of people there were in society of this time, or how formally they were defined. Later adoption and adaptation of the Confucian system would create a clear delineation in most of society, while the court itself would adopt a Chinese court-ranked system for those in government. But all of that is sometime in the future of these islands. What we do know is that there were the leaders, sovereigns or chieftains, and then there appear to have been at least one group of "important" people below them, either local leaders or other government functionaries. It's also unclear if these elites held status themselves, or if it was based on the group. A later system of social titles was actually based on the ranking of one's entire family unit. Then there were the free common people, who still held a great deal of autonomy, and finally there were serfs or enslaved people, who would have had the least freedoms. Wait, but... slaves? Yep, that's right. This last one may come as a shock to people who aren't aware of this particular practice in Japanese history. I mean, I'll be honest, it's not often talked about, but enslavement was a punishment that was used throughout Japan up until the 16th century, when it was outlawed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. And this is something we just don't normally associate with Japan. We don't see them as having slaves, and that may be because the marks of servitude are not as obvious as they were in the West. There certainly is no evidence of the kind of wholesale chattel slavery that fueled the Western imperial expansion. But there were still enslaved people, nonetheless. This may be a good time to bring up a story that I think illustrates the difference, at least to some extent. Recently, the story of Yasuke has become more well known, an enslaved African who was presented as a gift to Oda Nobunaga. There's even a movie coming out that you may have heard about, with none other than T'Challa himself playing the titular role Chadwick Boseman. Now, as the story goes, Nobunaga did not recognize Yasuke as a slave, as someone's property, the way they did in the West, and so he treated him just like other servants. Yasuke was given greater freedoms than he would have enjoyed with the Portuguese, even the Jesuits, and eventually accompanied his lord into battle. Of course, this all happened because Oda Nobunaga was a nice guy. Oh, wait, scratch that. I meant to say he was a blood-soaked warlord who slaughtered thousands in his quest for dominance. And he also liked no theater, encouraged free trade, and helped encourage the arts that flourished into the Momoyama period. What can I say? People are complicated, and if you're looking for good guys and bad guys in this narrative, you're going to be disappointed. History is much more nuanced than that. So yeah, Oda Nobunaga was not nice. Yeah, he patronized the arts and was a fan of no theater. He also burned down the monastery of Mount Hiei and violently put down the Ikko Ikki, alliances of lords and commoners who followed a sect of Pure Land Buddhism and were resisting the traditional governors in Daimyo. Nobunaga ruthlessly punished those who opposed him and threatened his power, Daimyo and commoner alike. Nonetheless, Yasuke seems to have thrived in Nobunaga's retinue and was able to rise through the ranks, not unlike a certain Hashiba Hideyoshi had done. Thus, Yasuke, as he was known to the Japanese, became the first ever foreign-born, well, at least non-Asian-born, samurai. Many accounts attribute this to Nobunaga's lack of understanding regarding slavery, but they clearly had slaves, and Nobunaga was hardly the kind of man to give in to altruistic motivations. More likely, slavery in Japan was of a very different nature. Not something to be lauded by any account, though in a society where the commoners are basically slaves to the land-holding elite, the difference between free and slave may not have been as great as one might think. Regardless of the exact nature of slavery in Japan, it was definitely a practice since at least the late Yayoi period and continued, in one form or another, up until Hideyoshi banded all together during the Momoyama period. Even still, there were certain types of essentially indentured servitude that would remain up until the present day. So yeah, slavery was a thing. But besides slavery, there was also a clear divide between just the free commoners and the elites during Queen Himiko's period. For instance, when a higher-ranking person traveled upon the road, lower-ranking individuals were expected to get out of the way, walking off backwards, off the road, into the bushes if necessary, until the important person had passed. If all this sounds familiar, it may be because it seems a lot like displays of deference that were expected even into the Edo period, when lower-ranking individuals were expected to make way for the various daimyō's processions, even dismounting from horseback and closing windows so that they wouldn't be at or above the daimyō's eyeline. This tradition is part of what led up to the Namamugi incident in Yokohama, where a British man, Charles Lennox Richardson, was cut down by the samurai of Satsuma domain for what they saw as an affront when he and his party did not adequately remove themselves from in front of their daimyō's procession. Similarly, when a lower-ranking person addressed a person of higher rank, they are expected to crouch or kneel and put their hands on the ground. I don't know about you, but this sounds an awful lot like a kind of kowtow, a deep, respectful prostration. You know in anime where someone makes a deep apology and suddenly they're down on their hands and knees banging their head against the floor? Okay, well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I think you get the point. Again, this is a custom that continued in various fashions up into modern day. Even now, if someone wants to issue a sincere apology to someone, they might literally get down on their hands and knees to make the apology. I mean, this is only done in extreme circumstances, but it derives from this much earlier form of etiquette. So if that's what the lower-ranked person did, was there anything expected of the higher-ranked person? I mean, did they just ignore the peons and go on their way? Well, actually, the higher-ranking person was expected to respond verbally. The Chinese recorded this as something like "ai". And if you think that sounds remarkably similar to a modern Japanese affirmation, "hai", you wouldn't be the only one. Still, there isn't a clear link between the two, and it's quite possible that the response was mistransliterated, but it is nonetheless an intriguing thought that this common gesture is something that goes back even this far. Now there is also a mention of how the higher-ranking people show their respect, which is simply to place their hands together. I mean, think of your traditional gesture of prayer, or the gassho motion, where both hands are placed palm-to-palm, fingers up. In fact, some scholars assume this must be a religious gesture, but there really aren't any other mentions of religion, so I don't know. I think it must be something secular. Perhaps it's similar to the wai, a traditional tai greeting. It could also have been something like the traditional Chinese greeting that you've probably seen in the wuxia films. You know, that palm-and-fist salute that supposedly goes back to the Zhou dynasty in China. So that covers many of the rituals having to do with social interactions. What about other rituals, though? I mean, from early times, we know that bronze was important. Weapons and bronze bells were buried in caches at various points. However, around this time, in the late third century, people seemed to have stopped burying the caches of weapons and bells. Or perhaps they had simply abandoned them and didn't bother digging them back up. Whichever it was, we don't see these kinds of ritual burials moving forward, at least not on the same scale. That doesn't mean bronze wasn't still important, and we'll talk about that, but the rituals had certainly changed. So what were the rituals that Queen Himiko and her people practiced? Well, first off, let's talk about divination, as that's one that comes up a lot. Divination is generally considered an art of fortune-telling, you know, predicting the future. Dousing, tarot cards, palm reading, astrology. I mean, these are all things that we probably know the best, and it's evidence of the things that we do as humans to try to figure out just what's coming next. Heck, even today, we still look to people to tell us the weather, to predict the stock market, and more. Our methods now may have more science behind them, but they address the same very human concerns. So without complex computers and calculations, what did the Wa people try to do to predict the future? Well, a common practice since early times was to use bones, typically an animal's shoulder bone or perhaps a turtle shell. The diviner would ask a question, and the bone would be placed in a fire. Based on how the bone cracked in the fire, soothsayers were expected to be able to determine, uh, divine, if you will, whether it was an auspicious or inauspicious answer. Essentially whether the answer was yes or no. From later accounts, we know that this was not just a single question and a single bone, but rather it would be performed multiple times to ensure the answer was correctly interpreted. In China, this practice went back to at least the late Shang dynasty, where auk shoulders or turtle shells were used. Technically the plastron, the flat shell on the underside of the turtle's body. By the time of Wei Chronicles, it appears that plastromancy, using turtle shells, was the current method of practice in China, but the Wa were practicing scapulomancy, using deer scapulae or shoulder bones. And yeah, those are the technical terms for these kinds of divination. There's your little fun fact for the day. Now later in the Kofun period, turtle shell divination would be introduced alongside scapulomancy, and it's still practiced in certain rituals even today. In fact, during the start of the current Reiwa era, turtle shells were used to determine which prefectures would provide crops for the Daijou-Sai, part of the traditional enthronement ceremonies for a new emperor. As we can see, this practice goes back to the earliest times in Japanese history. Of course rituals weren't only based on what would happen in the future. As with many places around the world, death itself was ever-present in Wa society, and the Wa had their own rituals to help them deal with it. The close relatives of the deceased would often start a period of mourning, in this case lasting ten or more days, during which time they would obey certain taboos, such as refraining from eating any meat. They would grieve and lament, as any of us would do upon losing a loved one. Meanwhile their friends and neighbors would do almost exactly the opposite, holding something akin to an Irish wake, singing, dancing, drinking. You can almost imagine the mixed atmosphere with the family grieving, but the friends and associates attempting to inject some levity and remember the better parts of the deceased's life. As with other such rituals around the world, it seems clear that, although it may be done in the name of the deceased, these rituals would have been a powerful means of bringing closure to the family and friends. It provides a framework, during which time both grief and joy can be expressed, and there's also an end, when the dead are buried and the living have to move on. Now another traditionally key component of Japanese rituals is, and was, purity. When it was finished and the dead were buried, the family would purify themselves, washing away the pollution associated with death. And purity is a theme that we see consistently throughout Japanese ritual, even today. Back in the Jomon episodes we talked about the practice of Oharai rituals, using hitogata, or a doll made of wood or paper. Much of Shinto practice is based around purification, and even as you enter the grounds of a Shinto shrine you should first go over to the hand washing basin, where you take some water, and outside the basin of clean water please, you wash your hands and your mouth, symbolically cleansing yourself before going into the shrine grounds. For some practitioners, they'll perform an even more serious ritual, plunging their entire body into a sacred river or stream to purify themselves, or perhaps sitting under a waterfall. Salt, fire, and even the waving of the paper wand are all geared towards various means of purifying an area, person, or thing. Impure things can include death, blood, as well as spiritual uncleanliness, similar to the Western concept of sin. Cleanliness is next to godliness, taken to a whole other level. What you ate and put in your body was also important. And this leads me to one of the most unique ritual practices of this time. The professional jisai, sometimes known as an abstainer. For long, large, and risky enterprises, you might appoint a person as a sort of spiritual scapegoat. This jisai would go on the journey and abstain from a number of things that were otherwise common. They wouldn't comb their hair, they wouldn't bathe, they wouldn't eat meat, and they would remain chaste. The only water that they would take in would be to drink. It was thought that by doing this, they could attract any of the bad spiritual energy to themselves and the journey itself could be successful. If that happened, they would be rewarded with wealth and honor. On the other hand, if they were caught breaking any of their taboos, or if they were simply suspected of it because the mission did not go as planned, or there were illnesses or accidents, then they could be taken and killed. Rather extreme if you ask me. Regarding other specific religious practices, we have very little information. Himiko herself is often described in terms reminiscent of a shaman, an intermediary with the spirits, which has been associated with the Shinto priest or miko, the shrine maidens who assist with many of the rituals. The Chinese chronicles claim that Queen Himiko practiced Kido, or the way of demons. Now this likely referred to the various practices and religions of the wa which really aren't given any deeper explanation and which the Chinese themselves would have seen as superstitious compared to their enlightened beliefs and thus they may not have recognized them as any kind of formalized religion because they didn't fit into their own concept of what that would be. Of course there was no codification of Shinto at this early date. The concept of Shinto, or Kami no Michi, the way of the gods, is something that was largely a reaction to the importation of the foreign Buddhist religion. I mean up to that point it was simply what people believed and there was no clear delineation between what you did for the Kami and what you did in the rest of your everyday life. The two were just considered part of one entire cosmology. And so it wasn't until they had something to contrast it against that they really had to put a name to it and then try to find out how to codify it. The beliefs and rituals of the time of Himiko are largely unknown, but most people figure they were likely some form of proto-Shinto practice connected with the spirits of the land. We do have some physical artifacts that may hint at later practices, but it can be hard to know just what they were for and how they were used. At the Yoshinogari site, in modern day saga prefecture, some of these physical artifacts that they found are carved wooden birds which appear to have been stuck on the end of poles. Some people think these birds were set up on various gates, and that these even gave those gates a name, Torii, the place where the bird sits. Birds are also tied into the worship of the sun, as cocks are thought to greet the sun each day with their crowing, and there is clearly a connection between Yamato and the sun. I mean, Amaterasu Omikami is after all a sun deity, and many have noted that the word "hi" found in Himiko as well as "hiko" and "hime" is in fact the word for "sun" in early Japanese. We have also found carved masks. Some of these go back to the Jomon period, but there is a late Yayoi wooden mask found at the Makimuku site in Nara prefecture. This one is actually a recycled piece of an old wooden hoe blade, you know, a simple agricultural tool, and the hole for the shaft was made into the mouth, and then two eyes were then cut out and a nose roughly shaped from the tool's original design. What ritual they were used for is unclear, but there are still rituals today where masks are used, typically so that an individual, a human being, can stand in for some otherworldly participant. Another material component that we find are the jeweled beads, or magatama. Magatama are comma-shaped jewels made from jade or other materials ground down into their distinctive shape. It's thought that these shapes may have come from an early form of decoration, such as bear claws or the like, and which came to be replicated in stone and other materials. Eventually, though, the shape took on its own meaning, and you see this jewel shape used for different purposes. As far as ritual goes, we aren't sure when, but the jewel clearly became associated with the rituals of state, as it's one of the original three regalia, the jewel, the sword, and the mirror. In fact, it was the only piece of the regalia that stayed with the sovereign, at least according to the later Japanese stories. Again, we don't know what they were used for at this time, it's possible they were little more than jewelry, and their power came more from their sacrifice as something of value than any inherently spiritual power that they themselves were believed to possess. However, it is equally likely that they were considered amulets of some sort, with power attributed to both the shape and the material of their manufacture. While we are on the subject of ritual and spiritual beliefs, a quick note here about Shinto in general. Shinto, as we mentioned, is the way of the Kami, and it's not a religion with a core founding date. There's no single charismatic figure that could easily be pointed to as having founded Shinto. Rather, it's an amalgamation of the practices from people across the main islands of Japan. It specifically does not include the Ainu religious practices, nor those of the Ryukyus, though there may be borrowings and similarities. The Kami of Shinto, the gods and spirits, are quite diverse. They can be gods, created from nothing, or they could be the embodiment of plants, rocks, animals, or even people. In Shinto belief, everything has a spirit, but as they age the spirit may mature. Unless an old tree that has survived hundreds of years is more likely to be venerated than a sapling. This even led, in later periods, to an aversion to hanging onto old things, disposing of old dishware and other household goods, lest they develop their own powerful spirits. And I have to tell you, there are some wonderful scrolls built of dancing plates and other household utensils coming from this belief. Kami are rarely seen as good or evil, at least not down in their very core. They are powerful forces who can intervene in a variety of mysterious ways, and so people will propitiate them for assistance. Alternatively, when they get angry, they can become wild and uncontrolled, bringing disaster and ruin. And so there are often taboos that must be followed, and offerings brought to please them lest they turn wrathful. If there is a particularly bad event, people may turn to a priest, shaman, or medium as an interlocutor to try to understand which spirit might be causing the disturbance and how they can be appeased. If there is a holy text of Shinto, it is probably the Kojiki, one of the two extant Japanese histories covering this period. Primarily, it is the early part of the Kojiki which provides the stories of the gods and spirits of Japan. That said, local tradition can often contradict the Kojiki, since the Kojiki was a compilation of existing stories and traditions, rather than something that was created out of whole cloth, and people have passed down those traditions in slightly different ways in different areas of the country. Since the Yamato sovereigns would come to base their legitimacy on their descent from Amaterasu, the sun goddess, many shrines around the country became part of the government and fell under government controls and regulations through much of Japanese history. In fact, it was not always clear just exactly where ritual ended and government began, and several families became important because of their involvement in controlling various rituals. So it is not exactly surprising that Himiko's own power might be based on her role as some sort of intermediary with the spirits. Another key area of ritual in people's lives we have already talked about was of course in the area of death, and we already talked about the way people mourned and celebrated the death of their loved ones. We have of course seen the cemeteries and the way the cemeteries became stratified over time, and we also saw the elite graves situated in mounded tombs. These yayoi tomb mounds were called funkyubo and they tended to be square shaped and might include several burials. At the Yoshinogari site once again we see individuals interred in giant pots for coffins, usually two pots that the individual was placed in between, and these were installed either into the tomb mound or they were buried in the ground outside. This concurs with what the Wei Jie states, claiming that the corpse may be placed inside a coffin and that dirt was then piled up around it. Around this period we are actually seeing the evolution of these funkyubo into something different. Larger tomb structures, often either round or keyhole shaped, meant for a single individual. These would often have an internal burial chamber where the coffin and even a sarcophagus could be placed. These are what are known today as kofun, or old tombs, and we are on the cusp of the transition from the late yayoi to the early kofun periods, where this expressive form of burial, which required considerable labor and thus demonstrated the power of the ruling elites, would come to dominate the landscape. These kofun likely developed from when extremely important people died. As we said, many of the elites might be buried in the funkyubo, but when a sovereign died? Well in that case the situation was likely similar to others but on a much grander scale. The tomb would be larger, the rituals even greater. There's also one other part to the ritual, at least one other part that we are told happened. Human sacrifice. Now this is something that is more than a little controversial. After all, we have yet to find a tomb that clearly had people sacrificed along with the deceased occupant, but we've noted before how the Japanese soil is hardly conducive to the preservation of such evidence. Furthermore, many of the largest tombs are thought to be the burial places of members of the Yamato Imperial dynasty, and therefore their tombs are off limits to researchers. You can't dig up the old emperors, it just isn't done. Still, we know that it was practiced in China, and it's clearly mentioned in the Japanese Chronicles as an ancient practice, which was eventually done away with in favor of clay representations instead, the famous haniwa statues. Regardless of whether it was actually practiced, it does seem to hold true with later cultural practices. There's the concept, for instance, of junshi among the warrior class, where a servant might choose to take their own life when their lord died, following their lord in death. There are also tales of human sacrifice up to at least the 16th century in the form of hitobashira, or human pillars. In these instances, a person might be killed and tossed in a hole or under the foundations of a new building. The original idea was that their spirit would help strengthen the foundations of the building. Well, that was the purpose. Seems it often backfired, since most of these same stories are told today as ghost stories, with later generations working to appease the spirit of one who'd been murdered in this fashion and thus to stop the entire building from coming down around them. Now regarding the sovereigns, or at least the sovereigns that may have been able to draw this kind of attention, the first sovereign we have mentioned in the historical record is an unnamed king. The way chronicles say that he was king for 70-80 years, probably more realistically 35-40, but the point still stands he'd been reigning for some time before he died. We don't know exactly how he died, but there may be hint in the fact that the land was then thrown into disorder, with open warfare between the various states. It's possible that this unnamed king was actually the same as King Suisho mentioned in the chronicles of the later Han, who sent a mission to the Han court in around 107. If that is the case, then sometime after his reign, the country fell into chaos. It may be that Suisho was the first king who actually held sway over multiple countries. I mean previously we saw the King of Na, but he wasn't designated as the king of all of the Wa. Suisho may have been the king of the Wa, or at least the chief lord of some kind of alliance. But building a new tradition like that is going to take time, and it seems he didn't create something stable, and the alliance fell apart after his death, possibly even as the cause of it. This is not too uncommon when these kinds of new social traditions try to take hold. They often aren't successful on the first go. Now amongst some scholars, this period of war between the various states is known as the disturbance of the land of Wa, or Wa Koku no Ran. It would have been roughly around the time between 177 and 187. We don't really know much about this time. We do have a sword with a Japanese handle but a mainland blade inscribed in Chinese as being in the Zhongping era, that's between the years 184 and 189. It was buried in a tomb, but likely would have seen action during the fighting on the archipelago. At some point after that, the chieftains agreed on raising up a new leader, Himiko. We know that this had to happen before 238, because that is our first record of a mission to the Wei court. But the chronicles do mention other missions to the mainland, so it may even be she ascended much earlier and that she was already a grown woman by that time. There is some indication that there was some period of time between the fighting and her ascending the throne, but there are no other sovereigns listed before her. The chronicles seems to indicate that this position was not strictly by blood or inheritance, but rather was one that required some form of agreement from the elites. While the details are unclear, this looks to me like the wars had dragged on long enough that the states were coming to some sort of compromise. There was no clear victor, otherwise why would there have been anything like an election? We would see something about Himiko simply taking the throne. And thus I doubt there was any absolute authority. The state of Kuna and others mentioned in the record were not entirely under Yamato Sui. So even though the Chinese referred to this as a "kingdom", I have to wonder if it wasn't more of a confederation. Indeed even the later shogunal governments had to acknowledge that though they were the primary hegemon and they could likely crush any rebellion from a given province, it would likely leave them weak against the other factions. And therefore it was crucial that they took this into account. This also explains the need for commanders down in Kyushu to make sure that the peace was kept throughout the land. Interestingly, as described, Himiko does not sit enthroned upon a dais, handing down proclamations and overseeing the day to day business of government. Instead she is shown retreating into the palace. This would have been a large building or complex of buildings, possibly sitting ten to twenty feet off the ground. She surrounded herself with other women, a thousand maidens, according to the chronicle. Her brother assisted her rule and there was a single man who would bring her food and relay her words to the people. Or so the Chinese chronicles state. I've got to ask myself, how could she have ruled effectively in such a state? Lying on a single conduit to and from the outside? It seems likely that her role was to deal with spiritual matters, leaving the mundane business of day to day administration to her brother and various ministers. Some have even suggested that she was in a role more akin to the sayo or head priestess of Ise Shrine, which has traditionally gone to female members of the imperial household since at least the seventh century. Still the Chinese considered her the queen, and certainly seemed to believe she was the head of state. The ambassadors to the mainland are her ambassadors, and the Wei court certainly recognized her authority. They didn't mention any other king or ruler. There is some evidence that the early Yamato rulers may actually have been dual sovereigns. One ruling as a ritual authority while the other handled secular matters. We see evidence of this in the Japanese chronicles, though without outright confirmation, likely because the concept of rulership had changed a lot by the eighth century, and much of the narrative was arranged to fit the known model of the time, avoiding potentially uncomfortable questions. However, between the third and fifth centuries, we see evidence in the form of kofun-mounded tumuli. Naofumi Kishimoto has demonstrated evidence of two lines of large, key-shaped tomb mounds with slight variations in their shape and construction, but showing evidence of inheriting qualities from within their own lineages and roughly contemporary with one another. It could be that the type of tomb was dictated by one's position in this co-ruler dynamic. Another thought along these same lines is that these two co-rulers may have been gendered positions. There are certainly plenty of examples where we will find both a prince, or hiko, mentioned alongside a princess, Hime, from the same state. Maybe the sayo of Ise Shrine was originally created from this type of dual rulership model. On the other hand, there is nothing to say that the gender of either co-ruler would have been prescribed. Regardless, the Chinese chronicles merely mention a single sovereign at any given time, though that is possibly due to their own ideas on how states are or should be governed. Certainly Japan has had a variety of governance structures, many of which don't fit neatly into the systems of other cultures. The Insei system, in the later Heian era for instance, was one where the ten-no continued to play a ritual role as the head of Shinto state, but practical administration and authority was held by a retired ten-no who then acted as a Buddhist golden wheel turning sovereign. And by the way, isn't that one of the most badass names for a ruler? I mean, I want to be turning a golden wheel and ruling all under heaven. Then there was the shogunal system. From at least the Kamakura period through the Edo, where the shogunate governed the warrior families, effectively sidelining the imperial family and court nobility while still providing lip service to their authority. I mean, I guess the point here is that Japan is no stranger to complicated political systems that don't neatly fit into a standard definition. And that may be what is going on in this early period as the Yamato state is still coming together. Nonetheless for all of that I want to be careful. A lot of the research that has been done and a lot of the scholarship is too often based on a patriarchal idea of what authority could be. There is a lot about Himiko that is based almost more on how she isn't found in the Japanese chronicles. There's a lot of scholarship early on that tried to find either her place as one of the regents or other female rulers mentioned in the chronicles or tried to dismiss her as something that was outside of actual Japanese history. All of this smacks of people trying to take a woman and remove the authority that she actually held. It should be noted here that even later male sovereigns often didn't meet directly with various embassies. I mean, they might have their functionaries go out and meet with them, or they might meet but from behind a curtain or other such surface. And that could be where some of this idea that Himiko simply sat in the back and, well, talked to the spirits all day came from because it's what the ambassadors witnessed. Remember, we're not getting a first-hand account from the Japanese themselves. Based on some of the women we see in the stories of the chronicles and the Fudoki, it's quite possible that it was her armies that were most successful and it was her conquests from Yamato across the rest of the archipelago that put her in power. And so we shouldn't discount that. We just don't know. We don't have enough information. Personally, my headcanon is Himiko was in charge. She knew what was going on. She was the one sending out the embassies. She was the one who was in charge of the commanders down in Kyushu. This is a woman in charge of the archipelago of Wa, and her name is Queen Himiko. And in that complicated state is where we're going to leave things for now. Next episode, we'll really take a look at Queen Himiko and her dealings with the way. She actually sent several embassies over to meet them, and their timing tells us something about Wa's connection to what was going on in the mainland. Until then, thank you for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, tell your friends and feel free to rate us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more, we have information about our Ko-Fi site over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/podcast, where we'll also have some photos of various artifacts that we've discussed, as well as references and other material used for this episode. Questions or comments? Feel free to tweet at us @SengokuPodcast or reach out to our SengokuDaimyo Facebook page. That's all for now. Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.