Almost every achievement of Prince Shōtoku comes with the name of Soga no Umako beside it. What if the man really running the country was Umako, and the image of the prince was built from Umako's deeds? We introduce the evidence for this theory and the arguments against it.
From the Asuka Daibutsu to the Yakushi Triad of Yakushi-ji Temple took about a hundred years. Over that century the faces of Buddhist statues changed dramatically, depending on who commissioned them and on contact with lands across the sea.
In 679 Emperor Tenmu made six princes swear at Yoshino never to fight one another. It is well known that the oath was not kept. But follow each of them in turn and you find that the story does not end with killing alone.
Enter the mountains at the far end of Asuka, cross a single ridge, and you are in Yoshino. Prince Ōama crossed this road as if fleeing pursuers. Empress Jitō travelled the same road back and forth more than thirty times during her reign.
The man given command of the army in the Jinshin War was a 19-year-old eldest son. Because of his mother's low standing, he was considered far from the throne. Yet the way his death was treated was too grand for a mere prince.
As the empress who completed the ritsuryō state (a state governed by law codes), she is usually spoken of in the same breath as her husband, Emperor Tenmu. But she was also Emperor Tenchi's daughter. This column considers whether the sense of carrying on her father's legacy may have been the stronger one.
In ancient Japan the throne often passed from elder brother to younger. One attempt to draw a line from father to son failed. The one who made it stick the second time was Empress Jitō.
Kashihara, where Emperor Jinmu was enthroned, is now placed at the foot of Mt Unebi in Kashihara City. But the same tradition also survives in another Kashihara, in Gose City.