Bad Behavior and the People Who Excuse It

Continuing with Wakatake and looking at some of his more egregious behavior and how the people around him often turned it around or made excuses for him.

For more on this episoe, check out our website at https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-61

Rough Transcript:

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 61: Bad Behavior and the People that Excuse It.

First off, quick shout out to Owen for donating to support the show.  If you want to join Owen, you can donate over on Ko-Fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or check us out on Patreon.  More information at the end of the episode.

We have been talking about the reign of Ohohatsuse no Wakatake no Ohokimi, aka Yuuryaku Tenno, in the latter part of the 5th century.  As a quick reminder, this is the first sovereign for whom we actually have real corroborating evidence from the Chronicles and other sources. 

Either way, we do know that there was a sovereign named Wakatake—or Wakatakiru—in the latter part of the 5th century, and while many of the entries in the Chronicles are still doubtful—this is still several hundred years before it would all be compiled—in general the dates in the Nihon Shoki are considered more reliable, at least for things that one could reasonably expect would have been officially recorded, as opposed to just stories that were passed on orally.

If you’ve been listening to the past few episodes, you might have gotten the general vibe that Wakatake wasn’t a particularly nice guy.  Indeed, despite a literally glowing description of his birth—and I mean that, the Kojiki and the Sendai Kuji Hongi claim that the palace was filled with a bright light when he was born—Well, despite such a description, it is clear in the Chronicles that Wakatake had his shortcomings, namely a famous temper and a penchant for cruelty. 

 

So this episode we’ll dive even more into some of this bad behavior, which even the premodern commentors take a negative view of.  The Nihon shoki is more critical in general, but even the Kojiki paints him in a pretty bad light sometimes – and what is also interesting in these tales are the ways in which others try to mitigate Wakatake’s shortcomings, reinterpreting his behavior to smooth things over. So let’s get into it, shall we?

One of the first and best examples is a  story out of the Nihon Shoki, which took place, we are told, in 458, early in Wakatake’s reign.  He and the court had gone to the Yoshino Palace, and from there he went out hunting in the area of Mimase.  This was around the southeast corner of the Nara basin.  This had apparently become a new popular destination for hunting, much as Awaji island was with Wakatake’s predecessors. 

In the morning, Wakatake went out with his retinue of ministers and stewards, and by all accounts they had a fruitful hunt—in fact, they were so successful they had just about depleted the local fauna.

As was typical in one of these official hunts, the stewards that were brought along were expected to dress the game brought in by the sovereign and his ministers.  They would skin, clean, and render the game down into component meat, skin, et cetera.  It was bloody work, and in later centuries, at least, would be considered a polluting activity that would require ritual ablutions, and was often left to others to handle whenever possible.

And so it was somewhat shocking when Wakatake suggested to his high-born ministers that they get their hands dirty and take part in the work of dismembering the carcasses themselves.

Nobody knew how to respond to this.  One can imagine the pall of awkward silence that fell over the assembled crowd.  After all, nobody really wanted to get elbows deep into the blood and guts of the game they had taken—they had people to do that for a reason.  But neither did anyone want to tell that to Wakatake, who, one must remember, only a year or two earlier had murdered his own family in a deadly play for the throne.

Of course, this silence only further angered Wakatake, who was upset that nobody would say anything, and so he took out his anger on one of the stewards, the horse-keeper of Ohotsu, and killed him right there, in front of everyone.

One can imagine that things remained tense around the encampment after that, and when the rest of the royal court, including the current and previous Queens, Hatahi Hime and, one assumes, her daughter, Nakashi Hime, though perhaps they are referring to Wakatake’s mother, Osaka no Naka tsu Hime, who had been queen to Woasazuma Wakugo.

When they showed up it was clear that everyone was on edge, and no doubt a few discrete questions allowed them to quickly discern what had happened.  The two women, the Queen and the Dowager Queen, chose an Uneme, Hi no Hime, who was the daughter of the Atahe of Yamato.  They had her take the sovereign, Wakatake, a drink of sake.  The sake, being served by a beautiful woman, was enough to distract Wakatake’s anger and get him to calm down enough so that the two royal women could talk with him.

They listened as he recounted his version of events.  He said that he had wanted to cut up the meat and have an impromptu banquet there on the moors to celebrate the huge success they had had, but everyone had just gone silent.

The Queen Dowager mollified the petulant Wakatake—I imagine there were a few “there there” moments—and suggested that the rest of his retinue didn’t understand how Wakatake really wanted to create a new family Be group—the Shishihito, or Fleshers’, Be—who would be dedicated to this kind of field dressing and general butchery.  She praised this initiative that she claimed Wakatake had clearly intended, offering up two of her own attendants to be a part of this new group:  Masakida and Takame, both from the Mito Be of Uda.

This gesture, which allowed Wakatake to save some face for his murderous behavior, seems to have worked, and others joined in.  The no doubt by now aged Agoko no Sukune, the governor, or Miyatsuko, of Yamato, who had served through several reigns, now, offered up some of the Kotori Wake of Saho and the other elite houses—the Omi and the Muraji, as well as the Tomo no Miyatsuko and the Kuni no Miyatsuko—all offered someone to form this new family.

Of course, this was hardly an isolated incident, but just a particularly memorable one.  The Nihon Shoki goes on to comment that apparently Wakatake killed a great many people due to his mercurial temperament, and the court itself censured him, such that he was known to later generations as the “Greatly Wicked Sovereign”.  This may be a note more of the Chroniclers than his contemporaries, however, as the term used—Dai’aku tenno or perhaps the Dai’aku Sumera no Mikoto—is clearly anachronistic to this period.  Regardless I think we get a good idea of just how he was judged by history.  The Nihon Shoki goes on to say that Wakatake’s only real “friends” in the court were Awo Musa no Suguri of the Fumu Be and Hakatoko, the Tamitsukashi of Hinokuma, though even this is something of a backhanded compliment:“Suguri” is likely a word from the Korean peninsula, and the characters used imply a meaning of Village Master, while “Tamitsukushi” appears to mean an “Employer of people”.  Both of these were rather low class designations for people said to be friends of the sovereign himself, and one has to wonder that he didn’t have any other friends within the court.  They would later be two of his primary ambassadors to the Liu Song court on the continent.

Yoshino or nearby Katsuraki, provide the backdrop for a fair number of the stories about Wakatake, from finding a maiden there that he apparently wed (though we have no further information on that from the Kojiki) to meetings with gods and near death experiences.  Many of these stories take place while hunting.

One of the stories that shows up in both the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki is the story of the dragonfly and the gadfly.  In both cases, Wakatake was on the Yoshino plain when a gadfly came down to bite him.  But then a dragonfly came and, in turn, bit the gadfly and flew off.  The dragonfly was likened to a loyal attendant, helping his sovereign, and there is a long poem, which I won’t recount here at the moment.  Suffice it to say, the incident referenced in the poem was claimed as the primary reason for how the area, the Akitsu Plain, received its name—“Akitsu” being an old name—possibly the original Japanese name—for “Dragonfly”, which is, today, more commonly known by the on’yomi reading of the kanji used in the text: tonbo.

Needless to say, it is unclear if this was originally about Wakatake, or simply attributed to him later.  Both the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki mention the incident, but in slightly different places in the story.

Another story found in both works is intriguing because it is clearly the same story with two different outcomes.  According to the Nihon Shoki, as Wakatake was out hunting on Katsuraki, there was a strange bird, only the size of a sparrow, but with a long tail that dragged upon the ground.  As it flew it let out a cry that sounded like a warning: “Have a Care!  Have a Care!”

Suddenly, a raging wild boar emerged from the foliage, and Wakatake’s retinue ran and climbed trees to get away.  Wakatake tried to encourage them: “When a savage beast meets with a man, it immediately stops.  Shoot it with an arrow and then stab it.”  However, they were all afraid, and stayed up in the trees, unable to will themselves down to face the fearsome beast.

Only Wakatake stood his ground.  As the boar came charging forward, he nocked an arrow in his bow and let it fly.  The arrow pierced the boar’s hide, but it kept charging, seemingly unphased.  It made an attempt to gore Wakatake, but he gave it a kick that killed the beast.

After killing the boar, Wakatake was furious, and he was determined to also kill every single one of his attendants. After all, they had all fled, leaving Wakatake alone with the beast.  He had them rounded up for formal execution. 

Apparently, by way of apology, the attendants sang a song about climbing up into the trees, and how sorry they were.  Fortunately for them, the Queen heard their lament, and tried to intercede to stay their execution.

Now, at first, Wakatake was stubborn, and he was even upset that his queen was apparently taking the side of the attendants.  However, she laid out the political ramifications, and mentioned how people were generally talking about how much Wakatake loved the chase and loved hunting game, as opposed to tending to his duties as sovereign.

Here the Nihon Shoki inserts a clear passage from continental sources that basically states that if the sovereign put his attendants to death, he was no better than a wolf.  Eventually Wakatake relented and stayed the execution of the attendants, and as they were leaving, Wakatake heard shouts of “Long Live the Sovereign”, which pleased him to no end.  As he put it:  while everyone had caught game, he had caught words of praise, which were much better.  This seemed to change his mood around entirely.

There is a lot here that mirrors the previous story, once again showing a quick-tempered Wakatake who was quick to order that people be put to death, and only through the intercession of some outside trusted advisor—in the two cases we’ve seen so far, it was the women in his life-- who display the true political savvy necessary to rule.  This kind of influence and political involvement would be a hallmark of ambitious women well into the Nara and early Heian periods, even as the court adopted a more patriarchal model from the continent.

The story also demonstrates Wakatake’s physical prowess.  Few men would be able to stand their ground against a charging, wild boar, who are renowned for their ferocity and tenacity.  In Europe, the traditional hunting implement was a specialized boar spear, which included a cross-piece partway up the shaft.  That way, if the hunter successfully speared the boar, the cross-piece would help prevent that boar from continuing to move forward along the spear and gore the hunter, which they were known to do.  To take one out with an arrow and a kick would be quite the feat.  It is almost as if Wakatake were some kind of super hero, like a Captain Yamato, but without all of the redeeming moral and ethical qualities.

The Kojiki gives a slightly different version of this story, though built around the same core, which is probably that poem that was mentioned, earlier.  Here, though, the poem is put in the mouth of Wakatake, for it was he who climbed the tree to get away.  In the Kojiki version there is no warning, and the boar suddenly appears.  Wakatake immediately shoots at it with a hummingbulb arrow.  Of course, that just pisses it off—the humming bulb on those arrows was likely meant for flushing birds and game, and given the bulge and the typical style of crescent-shaped arrowhead used on those arrow, it would have cut, but wouldn’t have really pierced the boar’s hide.  That suggests that it was a mistake—perhaps Wakatake already had it readied, as they expected to take birds or he mistakenly pulled it in his haste.

Either way, he now had an enraged boar headed his way, and so he ran away and climbed a black alder tree, where he—not his attendants—sang the song.

Given that song, it seems that the verse was actually the core of this story as it was passed down, and was probably somewhat well known in parts of the archipelago.  This points to an oral history that may not have been well remembered, in truth, and so all of the other details are a bit fuzzy when it comes right down to it.

The Kojiki chooses to tell this story as a mistake by the sovereign, rather than taking another opportunity to highlight his cruelty.

This story about the boar, by the way, appears to be one of the enduring images of Wakatake, and many of the later depictions of him show him killing the boar, as in the Nihon Shoki tale, almost as a way to know that it is him.  So that is at least how he was known by the 19th century.

There is another tale that goes along with this—a bit more fantastical, and depending on the source it either happened just before or just after the incident with the boar, and that was when Wakatake met a god and his retinue.

It went something like this:

One day, Wakatake and his retinue went forth to go hunting game with bow and arrow on the slopes of Mt. Katsuraki.  All of his attendants were wearing a formal hunting outfit—presumably over their regular clothing—that was dyed blue with red cords attached.  As they were ascending the mountain, Wakatake and his retinue suddenly saw another group out with them.  This was also a retinue of hunters, dressed in the exact same way as the members of the Yamato court.  In fact, they were dressed so similarly we are told that you could not actually tell them apart.

This was a problem because apparently the dress of Wakatake and his retinue were meant to indicate that they were members of the court out with the sovereign of the land, so who were these supposed imposters?

When Wakatake asked this of the dopplegangers, claiming that there was only one ruler in the land of Yamato, he received back only an echo of his own question back from the other group.

Well, as we’ve seen, Wakatake wasn’t one to play games, and he started to get upset, so he had his men fix their arrows—at which point their dopplegangers did exactly the same.

Wakatake, not backing down, demanded that the other group say their names.  After that, he would announce his name, and that of his retinue, and then the shooting would commence.

This time the reply that came back was not a mimic of his question, but a name from the one who was in charge.  In form he looked like Wakatake, but when he spoke he said his name was Hitokotonushi no Ohokami of Kazuraki—the Great god of Katsuraki, Hitokotonushi—the One Word Master, which, as much as that sounds like One Punch Man, apparently referred to the deity would could induce good fortune with one word or bad fortune with another.

At that point, Wakatake realized he wasn’t dealing with any old mortal imposter, but instead with a visible kami—that is a local spirit in corporeal form.  This put the literal fear of god into Wakatake, and he quickly changed tactics.  He had his men put down their weapons, and he took off his own sword and bow and offered it to Hitokotonushi.  He had his attendants take off the outer hunting garments they had—those blue garments with red cords—and he offered those up as well.

After this act of obeisance, god and his retinue decided to join Wakatake and his crew in their hunt.  One presumes that they allowed them their bows and arrows again, as the they continued, Wakatake and Hitokoto Nushi galloping together, bit to bit.  When they came upon a deer, they each deferred to the other, to let them take the shot, and they each used respectful language with each other—something that a sovereign would likely have had little reason to do in most circumstances.

As night fell, the hunt came to a close, and the kami accompanied Wakatake to the Water of Kume, at the entrance to Mt. Hatsuse, at which point the people observed Wakatake and the kami together and remarked on how Wakatake must be a sovereign of “great virtue”.

Of course, this is hardly an “historical” account—somehow I don’t think that there were actually “visible kami” wandering around and greeting people, and, if there were, I’ll leave that to more of a spiritual and religious podcast to discuss.  And yet this account is one of the few that show up in both the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, though with slightly different flavors.  The introduction, given here, between Wakatake and Hitokoto Nushi is largely taken from the Kojiki, including the colors of the attendants’ garments, the exchange between the two parties, etc.   In the Nihon Shoki they are less descriptive of the actual meeting, claiming only that Wakatake recognized the kami for what he was and having Wakatake give his name first.  It is also the Nihon Shoki, oddly enough, that goes more into details of the apparent camaraderie between the two, while the Kojiki seems to imply more of a supplicant attitude.  This may have something to do with the overall treatment that each work gives Wakatake.

In both instances—but most explicitly in the Nihon Shoki version—I would say this looks to me like they are attempting to clean up Wakatake’s image a bit.  After all, being seen in the company of a god apparently can do wonders for your image.

And that makes me wonder if there isn’t some grain of truth to this.  I’m not suggesting that Wakatake actually met a kami named Hitokoto Nushi on Mt. Katsuraki, and that they then went on to become best bros—though I think I just might be willing to binge watch that series on Netflix.  Rather, I wonder if this story wasn’t some religious tie-in to help legitimize Wakatake’s rule, possibly in connection with the elites of Katsuraki.  You might remember that Wakatake had previously taken the granaries of Katsuraki from Tsubura no Ohomi, along with Tsubura’s daughter, Kara Hime, and so he had clearly made ties with Katsuraki—though how the people there felt about him after he up and killed one of their most prestigious ministers is kind of difficult to ascertain.  Still, perhaps he did put in the effort with Katsuraki and their own beliefs as a way of appeasing local sentiment—and perhaps more.

Or perhaps Hitokoto Nushi wasn’t a kami at all, but some local elite.  The line between kami and human beings is more than a little bit blurred, after all.  Perhaps there was some local lord that Wakatake needed to appease.  I somewhat doubt this, however—Wakatake hardly seems like one to take the political option when violence could serve him just as well.

Of course, this is all just speculation.  I do think it interesting how even the sovereign bows to the will of a kami, and this could provide some idea of the hierarchy in place.  If there really are co-rulers, one in charge of more mundane and secular aspects of rule, it may be that even if that person were a warlord, there was still a certain amount of power that was available to those who were charged with communicating with the supernatural that even they would have a hard time touching.  This suggests to me that it wasn’t enough to just be the best in terms of physical and military violence, but that having a connection to the kami was also an important factor in ancient Japanese society.

And, in fact, we’ve already seen this at work many times over in the Chronicles, but it is still interesting as we get into more and more verifiably historical territory to see just what stories and what role the kami are going to play directly—at least in the minds of the people of the time.

It is also good to note that interactions with the kami did not always go smoothly.  The Nihon Shoki has another account, which it claims happened after Wakatake and Hitokoto Nushi reportedly became best bros.

According to the story, there was a man known as Chihisako Be no Muraji no Sukaru, who was remarkably strong.  Wakatake, for whatever reason, desired to see the form of the deity of Mt. Mimoro—aka the holy Mt. Miwa.  And so he sent Sukaru to go and seize the deity and bring him back.

Sukaru agreed to try, and so he climbed up Mt. Miwa and there he caught a large serpent, presuming that to be the form of the deity.  He brought the snake back down to the court and presented it to the sovereign.

Turns out Wakatake had not prepared to meet a god—he had not practiced abstinence in the way that was required before performing religious exercises—and suddenly the thunder rolled and the serpent’s eyes lit up in flames.

This was Wakatake’s Ark of the Covenant moment, and he was afraid, covering his eyes, and refusing to look on the kami.  He had Sukaru release the serpent back on the mountain and thereafter they referred to it as Ikadzuchi, aka Thunderbolt.

Once again we see kami—specifically the kami of Mt. Miwa—depicted as a serpent of some kind.  This is a theme running through a lot of these early stories about the common forms that kami might take.

Also, we can see in this a much less complimentary interaction between Wakatake and the supernatural, which implies, to me anyway, that he wasn’t really seen as a major interlocuter with the kami and other supernatural forces.  But then again, there are so many stories—some seemingly contradictory—that it can be difficult to tell what was the actual Wakatake like.  Was this all just because he was a complex individual?  Or did someone later try to tarnish or rehabilitate his image?  Since all of this comes at us at once we can’t quite judge how the stories changed over time, just how it had come together by the early Nara period.

It is interesting that Mt. Miwa pops up again in the story of Wakatake, as previous reigns appear to have been more focused on the coastal areas of Naniwa—modern Oosaka.  However, it shouldn’t be too surprising, as this sovereign’s activities seem to focus much more on the southern Nara basin, in general.  In fact, we talked a little last episode about how the sovereign’s palace was supposedly in Asakura in the land of Hatsuse—aka Hase.  This was an area in the valley east of modern Sakurai city, and Mt. Hase sits due east of Mt. Miwa, somewhat secluded from the rest of the Nara basin.  It is an interesting location from which to run the affairs of the archipelago, and I have to wonder whether this was actually the court, or just where Wakatake had his base of operations.  It does seem that it may have been relatively defensible, which may have been an asset given the nature of Wakatake’s own rule and his own tendency to resort to violence.

Various stories place Wakatake in Hase or its vicinity.  On a somewhat minor note, there is a song that he makes about the mountains while visiting a small moor—“ono” in Japanese.   This moor is now known to us—according to tradition—as the Michi no Ono, or the Small Moor of the Road.

In the Kojiki, they talk about how Wakatake was celebrating a state banquet in Hase, outside, under a luxuriant tree.  There was an Uneme present who hailed from Mihe of the land of Ise.  She was apparently in charge of the sovereign’s sake cup, and as she lifted up the great sake cup to present it to him a leaf from the tree above floated down and landed in the cup.

When the uneme offered the cup to Wakatake, he immediately noticed the leaf floating on the surface and grew incensed.  He tossed the uneme to the ground and held her there as he drew his sword and placed it against her throat, clearly intending to kill her for the perceived insolence of offering him a cup of wine with a dirty leaf in it.

It is said that the uneme was able to compose a poem about the palace of Hishiro at Makimuku, the tree above them, and more, which moved the heart of the sovereign such that he pardoned her and spared her life.

The Kojiki then recounts two other songs—one by the Queen which spoke of Yamato and the Hall of First Fruits, and another, said to be by Wakatake himself, about the courtiers of the palace.  In the end the Uneme was not only forgiven, but greatly rewarded—which sounds more like a payment for putting up with Wakatake’s violent mood swings.

The songs, by the way, appear to be official songs for state ritual, or at least that is what Phillipi theorized.  Once again it is unclear if they actually were connected to the event described, or if that was just a convenient place to put it all.

Wakatake could truly be problematic, at times.  It wasn’t just his temper that got him into trouble.

There was a carpenter, Mane of the Wina Be, who planed timber with his axe, using only a stone as a ruler.  All day long he would do this, making the boards that would be made into so much else, and so skilled was he that he never made a mistake.  Every board came out perfectly.

One day the sovereign was visiting and watched him at work.  He asked Mane if he had ever made a mistake and struck the stone, which would likely have been bad for his blade, as well as the work he was doing.  Mane replied, however, that no, he never made a mistake—a bit cocky, perhaps, but apparently his work spoke for itself.

Well Wakatake didn’t take kindly to Mane’s response, and felt that he needed to take the carpenter down a peg or two.  And so he generated a bit of a distraction.  He had two of his Uneme come down where Mane was working, strip off their clothing, and wrestle in plain view in nothing more than fundoshi—waistcloths used as underwear.  It was pay-per-view soft-porn brought straight to Mane, and even the expert craftsman paused briefly in his work to look up at the spectacle.  Then, however, he went back to his work—back to planning the boards.

Wakatake’s gambit had worked, however, and Mane was unable to shake the image of the two, and sure enough his mind wandered as he worked and he made a slight slip of his hand, striking the stone he was using and ruining the edge of his axe.

At this point I can imagine Wakatake jumping from his seat and immediately pointing out what had happened.  Wakatake then rebuked Mane, and said that he had lied to the sovereign—after all, he said that he *never* struck the stone.  And so he handed the carpenter over to the Mononobe for execution.

Mane’s fellow carpenters were aghast at what was transpiring.  One of them cried out, lamenting his friend’s fate, and this reached the ear of Wakatake, who seems to have had a moment to calm down.  Apparently the grief in the other carpenter’s voice was such that, at least for a moment, Wakatake was struck with an empathetic twinge of regret.  He seems to have realized just what an ass he was being, since, after all, it was only through his efforts to distract Mane that he had slipped in the first place.

“How many men I have destroyed!” he cried out.  Immediately sent a messenger on a black horse from Kai and he made him gallop all the way to the place of execution and deliver a pardon.  The messenger arrived just in time, and the cords with which Mane had been tied were unbound, and he sang his own song, one of relief, which I think we can all understand:

“As the night / Black was the horse of Kai-- / Had they but saddled him, / My life were lost-- / Ah!  That horse of Kai!”

This story is placed in 469—only three years before Wakatake’s death, and perhaps captures some measure of growth in Wakatake, as there are no further stories of him with such wanton and, frankly, manufactured cruelty.  Perhaps, as sovereign, he did grow, such that he eventually came to realize and regret the harm that he had done to so many.  Of course, it is all hard to tell, but I do like to think that these stories were at least placed in an order to suggest a growth of character as Wakatake aged.

And with that, I think we’ll call it good for this episode.  There are still more stories—this is one of the longer chapters in the Nihon Shoki, even though the actual length of the reign is not excessive.  This is likely just due to more records being available, though, as I mentioned before, It may also have been a well known reign and therefore a convenient dumping ground for anything that was thought to have occurred in the mid to late 5th century.

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