Episode 1 Myths and Migrations

Hello and welcome to the history of Japan, episode 1, myths and migrations, Japan before Japan. It's easy in the modern era, it's July 2010, to consider a place like Japan as having always been a unified, technologically advanced civilisation, but this of course wasn't the case. Indeed, as it turns out, we're lucky to know as much as we do about the emerging Japanese state up until a mid-7th century. The early history of Japan is not well history at all, it would be fair to say that the early history is a collection of myths, legends and tall tales of heroes, gods and demigod emperors, and that last group, the emperors, they only appear towards the end of the early history, but I'm being unfair, of course. There is a history of Japan before 660 AD, but it has only been pieced together in the last hundred years or so in a meaningful sense, and only then with the help of substantial documents from the Korean Peninsula and China, and of course archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists, geneticists, et cetera, et cetera. So why say that the early Japanese history is all about angry gods, loving gods, divorce gods, because that's what the first history of Japan written by the Japanese themselves tells us. The first two primary documents are the Kojiki and the Nihon Shokki. To go into all of the creation myths for Japan will be a long podcast series, and probably only useful for those people wishing to join the priesthood of the indigenous religion of Japan, Shintō, a name which essentially means "Way of the Gods". The Japanese themselves actually didn't bother giving the native religion a name until it became necessary to differentiate it from foreign imports, such was the ubiquitous nature of the belief. Shintō has been described as a sort of shamanism or nature worship, but there's a not really very helpful and probably border on being insulting. Incured, crude terms, Shintō could be considered nature worship because it has that aspect to it. You can go to Japan today and see hundreds, thousands, probably tens of thousands of shrines, dedicated to particular trees, waterfalls, rocks, mountains, etc. These shrines, how's coming? A term probably best described as spirit for now. It's also been described as some sort of exceptional personage. There are lots of other shrines that are for more human type, Kami. That is to say, they are described as having particular human attributes like, for example, names, parents, progeny, and personal characteristics, both good or evil. There are elements of Shintō that if mentioned will allow a better understanding of the cultural identity of Japan. So where to begin? Who to begin with? When do we begin? These might seem like logical questions to begin with, but truth be told, the wins and wares are foggy, literally. Let's just start at the start. Long, long ago, the first Kami created two new Kami, a male and female called Inzanagi and Inzanami respectively. Using a jewel encrusted spear that had been given to them, they poked and swirled and churned up the ocean, and then as the droplets of saltwater, dripped off the end of the spear, an island was formed, an island but not Japan. It was Inzanami who gave birth to this first island of Japan. Sadly however, Inzanami died giving birth to subsequent children one of which was the Kami of fire. Distraught at the death of his wife, Inzanagi went to the land of death to bring her back. In the black impenetrable gloom of deathland, he asked her to follow him back to the land the living, only to have her refuse on the grounds that she had already eaten in deathland and was therefore unable to return. Inzanagi refused to accept this however and striking a light in spite of the protests of his wife. What he saw was a maggot-written corpse, naturally he was horrified, but while he was horrified, Inzanami was terribly ashamed of her having been seen in this way and flew into a rage. She chased him out of the land of death with the help of various hags, and luckily for him he escaped, but not before permanently blocking the past between the land of dead and the land of the living. Inzanagi felt unclean from having been in the land of death and decided to bathe in a river on the western island of Kyushu. As he disrobed and began washing himself pieces of his clothing, jewelry and even body became born into new Kami. Kami such as the moon Kami and importantly the sun Kami Ameterasu. It was this Kami to whom dominion of Japan was given. It's possible that up to now you were wondering why you needed to know about swirling spears and undead hags. Ameterasu, the sun Kami, was until 1946, yes 1946, considered to be the direct ancestor of the current Imperial family of Japan. She is a major reason that the Japan flag prominently features the sun. She stands at one end of the historical spectrum as a mythological link to Japan today. And why in 1946 did this connection get severed after the Pacific War, the Allies forced Emperor Hitori to publicly state to Japanese civilians that the Imperial family were not gods, but we are getting way ahead of ourselves. Ameterasu's brother, the Kami of force, is the ultimate in an annoying brothers. After essentially being booted out of the family home by dad, he goes to his sister under the pretext of saying a final goodbye, but being the annoying brother that he is, he turns her into stirbs who with a terrible effect. What does he do that is so insulting? Well, he flies a horse and flings its carcass at his sister through a hole in the roof. In response to this terrible insult, Ameterasu hid herself away in a cave. In order to get her out, the other Kami pretended to have an enormous party with streamers and loud cheering. When she asked what was happening, they said that they're having a very big party and that someone far more interesting in any detaining than her had been in attendance. When she went to look out, they put a mirror at the end of the cave so that all she saw was a reflection of herself. And she liked what she saw. Even more tempted to see what was going on. She got a little bit further out of the cave. At that moment, I got dragged her out and put a rope across the mouth of the cave so that she couldn't get back in. Those ropes are now seen all over Japan at Shinto Shrine as ornamental ropes across the Tori Gates. You can see them all over the country. Ameterasu's great, great, great, great, great grandson, there's five greats in there, was Japan's first emperor. And he is known to us by his posthumous title Emperor Jimu. He is emperor number one. And we also get given the date of his reign as 660 BC. Now you'd think that this would be cause for celebration. After all, we have a name, a date, and even tales of his exploits as he moved his court from Kyushu to the Yamato Plains around present-day Nara. But don't get too excited because according to the Japanese history, Jimu lived for 127 years. In fact, as you go through the histories, you find that all the emperors and empresses seem to have an uncanny knack for living very long lives. The average age of the ancient emperors is 109 years old. To add insult to injury, the date of 660 BC is not at all reliable, not just because his ludicrous longevity, but also because his historians will leave that the compilers of Japanese history made some calculation errors in the use of the ancient calendar. So what are we left with? Anything? Most historians now look at the Shinto creation myth as essentially allegory for migration to Japan by people from the Korean Peninsula. They also consider the prodigious begetting of Kami to self-validation of the legitimacy of the Imperial rule. We are torn between dismissing the whole Kojiki and Nihon Shokki completely. We're trying to piece together particular truths as best we can without supporting evidence. The Kojiki was codified around 680 AD. I say codified because up until that point, writing didn't really exist in Japan, which meant that history relied on oral history. In fact, the tale of the creation of the Kojiki is an interesting tale in itself. It was at first or completely memorized by a man called Yedat no Adet, a man who was 25 years old and was apparently gifted with an ability to repeat everything he heard. Adet was given the task of recalling all the imperial stories that were known at that time. However, the Emperor had asked him to do that, died, and it wasn't until 25 years later that Empress Gemior in 711 ordered a scholar, Yasamaru, to transcribe the records that were stored in Ares memory. He did this over the space of four and a half months, and in 712 AD Yasumaru submitted to the shithron the whole Kojiki. It does make one wonder though that after twenty-five years did Ares actually remember everything he was told accurately. I'm sure that while the oral traditions in four strict repetition, I can't help but think that over a thousand years there might be some slippage and exaggeration. Worse, the earliest transcribers used the sounds of the Chinese characters, which had been recently introduced, to imitate Japanese words. If you aren't familiar with the function of Chinese characters, basically they have an inherent meaning, like, for example, a modern example, the little right-facing arrow on a DVD player that indicates play, no matter what language you speak. This got messy because, to use our play icon example, if the meaning, not the reading of the icon was play, as input in motion, as in make the recording come to life. But the sound you made with your mouth sounded like the word 'sword', for example. The Japanese used the sound only. So that the text was written, seemingly as nonsense text, but if you made the right sounds, you got Japanese words, native Japanese words, that had meaning in them, confused, so were they. But wait, it gets worse. Occasionally, the transcribers would flip back into Chinese Chinese, that is to say. If they wanted to use a Chinese term for a concept or noun, and it was faster to write in Chinese, or more readily comprehended in Chinese, they expected the reader to flip to Chinese reading mode. The Nihon Shoki was a far better product, but perhaps too good. It was written in classical Chinese and included annotations for meanings and readings, unlike its predecessor. With an increasingly sophisticated appreciation for governance, bureaucracy and legitimisation, the Nihon Shoki spends a lot of time on the direct, unbroken links between the gods and the ruling families of the day. And all this reaffirmation of important family lineages is great if you are an important family. And just to muddy the waters a little more, the Nihon Shoki includes lots of stories and quotes by various emperors, lords, villains and coming that bear an amazing resemblance to Chinese stories. But even with our doubts, let's return to Jimu. Remember him, Emperor No. 1. Back in Jimu's day, the Imperial Corps was based in Kyushu, a major island to the Southwest. It was decided that the seat of Imperial power should be moved to the centre of Japan. And they began a mass migration invasion that took many, many years. The two sources say that the process took anywhere between four and sixteen years. And that while things started easly enough, they encountered military resistance in the move to the Yamato district that cost the lives of prominent members of the Imperial family. What isn't clear, why did it take so long? The distance between southern Kyushu and the central plains of Yamato is about 600 kilometers. Sure, there weren't roads or a sufficient development of boat building technology used the inland sea, but four years. Or if we go with the other example, sixteen years. And why did they go there? And not somewhere else. It is presented in the Kojiki as a definite destination. Did they know about it in advance? It's interesting to note that rather than actually conquering the people who lived in the area set for acquisition, the Kami living there, and they were referred to as Kami in the Kojiki, essentially acknowledged the heavenly relationship as somehow connected relevant to their own lineage, which makes me wonder if this wasn't an ancient civil war, or maybe more simply a military adventure for a famously wealthy patch of turf. After being defeated near present day Osaka, Naniwa, for those familiar with Osaka, the migrating group decided that the real problem they were facing was not the difficult terrain, not the logistical challenges of moving a court, and not even the people who happened to live in exactly the spot they wanted to move to, a people who had a particular knack for war, it was decided that moving from east to west was the problem. After all, if you are attacking into the sun and you happen to be the great, great, great, great, great grandson of the sun goddess, what hope can you have? So logically, they decided to go all the way around the Kee Peninsula and attack the same region but from the opposite direction with the sun behind them. To help them get through the terribly mountainous path, Ahmet Arasu sent her great, great, great, great, great grandson, a Kro, the same Kro that is on the Japanese soccer team's jersey today, and in another link today, if you're a fan or even aware of Yu-Gi-Oh, the card-based strategy game based on the anime from Japan, then you might also be familiar with the Yata-Garasu card, which is from this myth. So with the sun behind him, a crow above him and a gaggle of some sort of tailed creatures, Jimu's family successfully took the land of Yamato as their own and established the new center of Japan's polity finally. It is recorded that this event happened on the 1st of January 660 BC, but as mentioned, this date is very suspect to the point of being completely meaningless. But best off saying, it was a really, really long time ago. The Kingdom of Yamato, based on the name of the place where the court was, was now established and Japan exists. Modern-day Japanese are some of the longest living folk in the world, something they are quite proud of with a life expectancy in the mid-80s, maybe though they should be feeling abject shame because according to the Kojiki and the Nihon Shokki, Impra-Jimu lived to 175 years of which were on the throne. This first reign of Jimu, emperor number 1, is at the end of the age of the gods and the beginning of the age of men, well emperor type men. In his 75 years on the throne he has said to have set about improving the land for production, appointing families to run aspects of the state. And it is all very well to say hey, my great grandma was the son you know, so get on board and start paying me taxes, but unless you have a way of making that happen either through rewards or punishments, no one is going to take you seriously. But the Imperials had a few things in their favor. For one, they had the military might and the technological advantage over the indigenous populations now known as the Ainu. Number 2, the legitimacy of the ruling class was self-supporting, all the major families were legitimate as long as everyone said they were all legitimate. Various family groups had defined roles in the state, religion, war, songs, pottery, etc. It was this cohesion that meant that individual rejection was a one way ticket to destruction. By agreeing that the imperial line was heaven descended, you are also borrowing a little spiritual help for your own ancient leading family. This doesn't mean that there wasn't conflict, there was, but the validity of the Imperials was never central to the battles, positions of power were. Lastly, rice, it's a great crop that although limits you to a particular part of Japan can feed a large number of people. In the Amato district, with its easy access to water and arable terrain, made this civilization flourish. As mentioned, all of the ancient emperors and emperors live on an average for 109 years. These ancient rulers are remembered today in the enormous keyhole-shaped tombs south of Osaka. Using Google Earth, if you look around 12 kilometers from the south from the center of Osaka, you'll see large wooded areas with moats shaped like keyholes. The fledgling state was making a start for itself and doing very well. It was well on the way to expanding its influence beyond the small area around Yamato, establishing links with the Korean Peninsula and China, and organising the operation of the state with increasing sophistication and effectiveness. Having said that, it was also by Chinese and Korean standards decidedly backwards in the cultural sense, lacking the technology of writing for a start, and still in the habit of burying people alive as part of the grieving process. In addition, the Amato people shared the island of Japan with Ainu, who weren't entirely on board with subjugation by imperial types. Join me next time when we move forward a thousand years to the time when Buddhism made Japan, and we meet the poster boy for the ancient imperial family, Prince Shortoku.