Who was "Queen Himiko" or Pimiko as identified in Chinese sources, the Wei Chronicles, which describe in detail a visit to "Wa" in 238 AD and where was the location of this kingdom called "Yamatai"?
1.Who was this Queen Himiko?
Queen Himiko was the queen of Yamatai kingdom or “country” (or state) who symbolized the unity of the Yayoi people.
Yamatai kingdom’s Queen Himiko (Illustration copyright: Newton Graphic Science Magazine “Nihon no ruutsu”)
What do the Chinese Sources Say?
Earlier Chinese ca. 432 CE Hou Han Shu (Book of Later/Eastern Han) accounts had described the land of Wa (Japan) as such:
“In the middle of the Lo-lang sea there are the Wa people. They are subdivided into more than a hundred ‘countries’[called communities in some translations]. Depending on the season they come and offer tribute”.
Thirty of these countries were known to have had direct contact with China. Historians equate these “countries” with chiefdoms.
The Chinese Wei Zhi accounts in 297 A.D. asserted that Yamatai kingdom was the strongest of those countries. Yamatai country was victorious after years of warfare. Gishi no Wajinden noted decades of warfare had ensued until “the people agreed upon a woman for their ruler”, i.e. when Queen Himiko came to the throne. Towards the end of 2nd century, around 30 small chiefdoms had allied with each other to form a confederated kingdom or state known as “Yamatai country” (Yamatai koku) with Queen Himiko at the helm.
Queen Himiko was known to the Chinese because her government had sent a diplomatic mission in the year 238 A.D. to the Wei emperor, Cao Rui’s court, and the delegation was received as presenting tribute to the Chinese emperor. As such, Queen Himiko was recognized as the ruler of Wa :
“Herein we address Himiko (Pimiko is used), Queen of Wa, whom we now officially call a friend of Wei … [Your ambassadors] have arrived here with your tribute, consisting of four male slaves and six female slaves, together with two pieces of cloth with designs, each twenty feet in length. You live very far away across the sea; yet you have sent an embassy with tribute. Your loyalty and filial piety we appreciate exceedingly. We confer upon you, therefore, the title “Queen of Wa Friendly to Wei”.
Queen Himiko may have held the ceremonial role of a shaman priestess, prophetess or perhaps, a pre-eminent shrine maiden with proxy access to the gods for the people. Gishi no Wajinden described her as a having “occupied herself with magic and sorcery, bewitching the people." Shrouded in mystery, Queen Himiko was said to have controlled the kingdoms by sorcery and magic. She was seldom seen in public and was attended by “one thousand attendants, but only one man.”
Queen of Yamataikoku Classical portrait painting by Yasuda Yukihiko Source: Wikipedia
Although Queen Himiko left the execution of the affairs of state to her younger brother, Queen Himiko very likely held actual power in addition to her ceremonial and religious role. She was guarded by a large army and the Chinese thought of her as a ruler with extraordinary power.
Yamatai kingdom prospered under Queen Himiko’s rule and was observed in the Gishi no Wajinden records to have had more than seventy thousand households, well-organized laws and taxation system and thriving trade. Her people were noted to have been mainly gentle and peace-loving.
Yamatai, Himiko’s headquarters, model by Osaka Prefectural Museum of Yayoi Culture
The Wajinden (another term to refer to the Wei Chronicles) records that 29 different kuni or “countries” existed and that three of these were ruled by “kings”. One of them was Ito where “there have been kings for generations, subject to the queen’s kuni [Yama'ichi] they rule.. Experts have identified Ito to be Itoshima peninsula (on Northern Kyushu) and the Hirabaru mound site is thought to contain the grave of Ito‘s king or queen (because it contained 39 bronze mirrors and other rich burial grave goods associated with rulers of the highest order). The Wajinden also hints to us how Himiko ruled:
” high [ranking] Wa are sent to inspect [the trade of the different kuni]. A high leader was especially sent to to the region] north of the queen’s land. He inspects all the kuni there. Regularly he rules in Ito.”
Thus Ito held an important role in international relations.
During her reign, Queen Himiko sent envoys to Gi to limit the influence of a rival power, the “king” of Kunu whose country of Kuna (Kuna no Koku) lay to the south of Wa. In 239 A.D., an emperor of Gi granted the Yamatai kingdom a honorable title “Sin Gi Wa O” along with a gift of 100 bronze mirrors. By 247 A.D. Queen Himiko’s realm and that of the country of Kuna were at odds, but the outcome of that conflict is not known, only that she sought Chinese imperial support and that she died likely in the year following that.
When Queen Himiko died, her people constructed a large burial mound (about 100 meters in diameter) for her. One thousand female and male attendants were sacrificed for burial along with their queen. She had lived between A.D. 183 and 248 without having ever married.
Upon her death, the male ruler who took her place did not last long and the chiefdoms fell into disunity and fighting. “Assassination and murder followed; more than one thousand were thus slain” according to Gishi no Wajinden. When Iyo, a 13-year old girl related to Himiko was placed on the throne, peace was restored and the fighting ended.
The location of Yamatai kingdom (as well as that of the burial mound of Queen Himiko) remains a mystery and is the subject of a huge academic controversy as to whether northern Kyushu or Kinai had been the actual headquarters of Queen Himiko.
Further reading: The Yamatai Puzzle: Where were Himiko’s headquarters?
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2. State Formation in Early Japan
Gina Barnes argues in her study of State Formation in Japan: Emergence of a 4th Century Ruling Elite (2007) that there were a small number of Yayoi polities that were integrated into the Han tribute network by AD 57. But when Han hegemony waned at the end of the 2nd century (220 AD), and the Lolang or Lelang Commandery established by the Han on the Korean Peninsula fell into the hands of a local warlord family who called their new commandery Daifang, power dynamics changed. When the Wei Dynasty came to power in China, they took this commandery back in 238; at that point, polities in the land of Wa began sending emissaries to Daifang including one from Queen Himiko whom the Chinese considered the most powerful of these little polities in the Japanese archipelago. This could mean, then, that Yamatai was the dominant polity in the larger country of Wa; Himiko was apparently a major player at the time but, curiously, her name does not appear in any Japanese written records which, of course, date from much later. (Barnes, p. 5)
Barnes argues that we can think of three subperiods of protohistory here: 1) the Early, 2) Middle and 3) Late Kofun or Tomb periods. As she describes them,
1) "the Early Kofun period is characterized by a ritualized authority for regional leaders, signified by bronze mirrors and beadstone products of jasper and green tuff deposited in the mounded tombs. A significant amount of iron is also present in the form of weaponry and tools….The center of political authority is considered to have been the Miwa area of southeastern Nara Basin incorporating the smaller Makimuku (http://archaeology.jp/sites/2010/makimuku.htm) district housing the Hashihaka Tomb—considered to be the burial place of Queen Himiko. (http://www.greenshinto.com/wp/2011/08/12/the-mystery-of-himiko/).
For More on the Importance of Makimuku see here.
The political center referred to here as the Miwa Court is believed to be less a physical or geographic entity so much as "a web of personal relations between the core elite, the paramount and the gods" (Barnes, State Formation, 190), and is linked to the Sujin line of kings in the Nihon shoki. Recent scholarship posits that the power center at the Miwa Court shifted to the Saki area of the northern Nara Basin in the mid-4th century or so.
2) The Middle Kofun period is marked by the construction of very large keyhole tombs on the Osaka Plains. The grave goods repertoire underwent significant changes: bronze mirrors and fine beadstone objects were no longer deposited. Instead, much more iron was deposited in the form of armor, weaponry and tools…Horse trappings, Sue stoneware, gilt bronze ornaments and gold jewelry began to appear in quantity in the mid-5th century….
3) Late Kofun period (from 500 AD) saw the Keitai line return the capital to Asuka. 552 saw Buddhism introduced so tomb culture began to decline in favor of Buddhist temples and monuments while Northern Kyushu and Kanto did not reflect these Buddhist influences as much. Asuka constitutes the last phase of the Kofun Era 645-710 and coincides the beginning of the Ritsuryô reforms which set the stage for the Nara Period in 710 when the capital was moved to Heijo, clearly modeled on the Tang system." (Barnes, pp. 9-15)
During all of these stages, Barnes argues, there were important interactions among communities and individuals on the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Islands quite apart from the communication with the Chinese either directly or through their commandery portals.
3. The Location of Yamatai
Many historians would like to believe that Yamatai was located in Kyushu because the large sized moated Yoshinogari settlement fits the description of Yamatai. Such historians think that Yamatai capital was first established in Kyushu and then the Yamato clan decided to move north and east toward the area where the first government was formed in the Yamato area. Shinto legends suggest this political move. But that last leg of the required journey cast doubts on this theory.
There is another problem with the Kyushu-Yamatai theory. It was recorded that the Chinese emperor had presented Queen Himiko’s envoy with a hundred bronze mirrors and for a long time, but few bronze mirrors had been recovered in Kyushu.
As archaeological evidence goes, large finds of bronze mirrors had always been found in the Osaka-Nara area (Kurozuka mound in Tenri city) …that is, until the discovery of 39 bronze mirrors in the Hirabaru mound in Kyushu. It would have been likely that some, if not all, of the Chinese emperor’s gift of the hundred bronze mirrors, would have been buried along with Queen Himiko’s tomb.
In the search of Himiko’s hundred mirrors, the 39 bronze mirrors that turned up in excavations of the Hirabaru mound site in Itoshima, Northern Kyushu is the latest and most important regional find generating great interest and research in the Yayoi-Kofun mounds. The mirror finds are regarded as a key to the puzzle and the distribution of the mirrors, including those presumably received as the Wei court’s gift, was regarded as a symbolic instrument for cementing political alliances.
Others believe that Yamatai kingdom was more likely to be located in the Kinai area where the Yamato imperial court and government was first established a century later. But that the Wei zhi’s account of the journey to Yamatai is at odds with that view too … because the journey to Kinai is … in the wrong direction.
The search is on for Queen Himiko’s tomb mound – some candidates include the the Hashihaka, Hokenoyama and Kurozuka mounds in the Nara area. Two key tombs which might help unpack this riddle, the Sujin Mausoleum and the Hashihaka, are manintained by the Imperial Household Agency (IHA) and are considered as tombs were members of the imperial family are buried so they control access and they do not let archeologists in. But we do not even know if these are the ones mentioned in the chronicles. Hashihaka, however, may be the grave of Princess Yamato, a female shamaness who may have been the person the Wei chroniclers called Queen Himiko. She was the shamness aunt of early king-ruler "Emperor Sujin" who ruled in place called Miwa where they build keyhole shaped tombs. One writer is convinced that:
The Makimuku site is almost certainly the birthplace of the Yamato state, the polity that would become Japan. The site differs in many respects from excavated villages that date from the same period. Excavations have found fewer farming tools and other evidence of agriculture, but more traces of public works than appear in other Yayoi period sites....[M]any factors suggest that Makimuku is not only the birthplace of the Japanese nation but also the site of Yamatai Koku. The fact that the building discovered in 2009 is significantly larger than any found at Yoshino ga Ri or any other site from the period is a strong indication, and the presence of many kofun (including one large enough to be the tomb of Himiko) which by improved techniques have been dated to the period of the visit by the Wei Chinese mission seems to greatly strengthen Makimuku's claim to have been Himiko's home.
Thus the puzzle remains unsolved today, and so too, the challenge to modern-day treasure-hunters in search of Himiko’s hundred mirrors.
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More commentary fom Gina Barnes:
"Was Miwa a state?" Gina Barnes asks. It may have been the center for a confederation of Early Kofun polities or "stratified chiefdoms." Remember, we do not yet have permament cities, walled or otherwise, in Japan. Just lots of communities ruled by chieftans who probably used magical powers, rituals, access to the transcendant, legends and myths to augment their status and legitimize their rule. The use of ritual to govern seems consistent with the earliest terms for government in the Japanrse language, matsuri-goto (祭り事 or just 政). Perhaps in the same compound of these early communities there was a chieftan's residence and a building for performing rituals.
The Miwa capital, suggests Barnes, "functioned primarily as a ceremonial centre rather than an urban centre comprised of highly specialized craft production units, public buildings and residential areas for court members." Therefore, the Miwa court existed less as a physical entiry than as "a web of personal relations between the core elite, the paramount and the gods." (189-90) Barnes can conclude, however, that probably the Yamatai location mentioned in the Wei Chronicles and the female ruler Himiko can be equated with Princess Yamato who was related to the Sujin line of rulers who built tombs in the southwestern Nara Basin. But it is difficult to know for certain. A Wikipedia article on Himiko concludes that the "Hashihaka kofun in Sakurai, Nara, was given a recent boost by radio-carbon dating circa 240-260 (Anon 2009). The early Chinese records of Himiko/Pimiko and her Yamatai polity remain something of a Rorschach test. To different interpreters, this early Japanese shaman queen can appear as evidence of: communalism (Marxists), Jōmon priestess rulers (Feminist history), Japanese conquest of Korea (Akima 1993), Mongolian conquest of Japan (Namio Egami's "horserider theory"), the imperial system originating with tandem rule by a female shaman and male monarch (Mori 1979), the "patriarchal revolution" replacing female deities and priestesses with male counterparts (Ellwood 1990), or a shamanic advisor to the federation of Wa chieftains who "must have looked like a ruling queen to Chinese envoys" (Matsumoto 1983)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himiko)
4. When was all this taking place?
Probably from the 250-350 AD period and it yielded a "ruling class of mutually communicating regional rulers and their families linking Northern Kyushu, the Yamato Plain and the Korean Peninsula." As Barnes states, "The story presented herein is essentially that of the emergence of a pan-regional grouping of elite rulers who established themselves as distinct from their local commoner populations through subscription to an exclusive burial system comprised of monumental tomb building and a relatively fixed repertoire of symbolic grave goods. This process of emergence is proposed to have constituted the process of social stratification, which took approximately one hundred years from mid-3rd to mid-4th century) to produce a rulng class of mutually communicating regional rulers and their families. Local distributions of different tomb sizes suggest several regional territorial hierarchies in the western archipelago, among which Miwa was anomalous in having an initial primate center without a clear territorial structure until the mid-4th century....I would propose that the territorial groupings that emerged in the Early Kofun period belonged to that ephemeral category of 'stratified cheifdoms', while Miwa, housing a ritual center, was well on its way to unifying these regional chiefdoms into a larger political unit when its development was truncated due to changing world circumstances." (196-97) The changing world circumstances to which Barnes refers is the waning of the Han Dynasty and the weakening of Chinese control on the Korean Peninsula which enabled the rise of Koguryo and the "empowering of small states across the northern Mainland landscape in the consequent absence of dynastic power. Koguryo's relentless push southwards from Lelang impacted first on Paekche, an emerging state in the west-central peninsula, and ultimately on the politics of the archipelago. The development of vertical slat armor in the Kaya region may be understood as a locally creative response to the Koguryo military threat. By the mid-4th century, this type of armor appears in Kinai tombs..." (Barnes, State Formation, 193)