The Jinshin Rebellion and the politics of historical narrative in early Japan.

• Author: Duthie, Torquil
• Position: Critical essay

When viewed from the far future, the Jinshin Disturbance of summer 672 stands out as a major event in Japanese political history, the moment when generations of foreshadowing gave way to decades of fulfillment. In significant part the moment looks that way because our primary source of information, Nihon Shoki, wishes it to do so. But even when we discount that source's grand hyperbole, shrewd selectivity, and handsome inventiveness, the summer of seventy-two still displays a watershed quality comparable to that of such years as 1185, 1600, 1868, or 1945. Conrad Totman, A History of Japan (1) As someone who specializes in late seventh century Japan, I am inclined to agree with Conrad Totman's proposal to upgrade the Jinshin Rebellion into that class of "major events" that determine the boundaries of historical periods. Such recognition is surely well deserved. After all, its victors and their descendants were responsible for adopting the titles, promulgating the laws, establishing the institutions, and building the capital cities that transformed the Yamato court into the imperial-style state of "Nihon." In a sense, therefore, we could say that the victors of the Jinshin Rebellion were the first to articulate the political contours of the "Japan" that is the subject of Totman's history. I suspect, however, that most people working in later periods of Japanese history would be unlikely to identify the date of 672 with the same readiness as they would the Genpei Wars, Tokugawa Ieyasu's victory at Sekigahara, the Meiji Restoration, or the end of the Pacific War. In large part, this is due to the fact that our "primary source of information," the Nihon shoki, does not present the Jinshin Rebellion in the unequivocal terms that Totman suggests, but rather as the culminating event of a highly convoluted narrative of imperial history that has multiple other watershed moments. In addition to the mythical and legendary foundations of the imperial realm--Ninigi's heavenly descent to earth, Jinmu's conquest of Yamato in 661 B.C., and Jingu's conquest of the Korean kingdoms--the Jinshin Rebellion is preceded by other watershed events such as the Isshi Incident of 645 that led to the Taika reforms and Prince Shotoku's reforms during Suiko's reign in the early seventh century. In fact, it was only in the late twentieth century, when all of these previous foundational moments came to be treated as anachronistic fabrications--to different degrees--of the Nihon shoki, (2) that Totman's "far future" finally arrived and the Jinshin Rebellion came to be treated as the epoch-making event that he describes.

Most of the voluminous scholarship produced on the Jinshin Rebellion in the last fifty years (3) has been dedicated to reading between the lines of the Nihon shoki account in order to try to separate the facts of the historical process from the fictions of historical writing. (4) Some of these attempts, such as those that speculate about the intentions of the main actors, have not been very productive. (5) Others, however, have been quite successful, particularly those that deal with broader issues such as the involvement of uji lineages from outside the Yamato area and the overall significance of the conflict. My aim in this article is quite different. Rather than attempting to discount the "grand hyperbole, shrewd selectivity, and handsome inventiveness" of the Nihon shoki account, my main focus is precisely the fictional nature of the account and the ways in which imperial historiography is configured as a literary narrative. (6) At the same time, however, my point is not simply that the historical process is only accessible through the constructed narrative of historiography, but also that historiography itself is in turn subject to the historical process. Although the Nihon shoki's account of the Jinshin Rebellion appears on the surface to make up a unified narrative that has been constructed by the winners, upon closer examination there is an underlying tension concerning the nature and basis of Tenmu's authority throughout the last four volumes of the Nihon shoki. This is most evident in the differences between alternative stories of Tenmu's departure from the Omi capital to Yoshino in 672. As I will show, these different stories form a complex tangle of competing succession narratives that are the expression of a historical process--the political struggles over the nature of Tenmu's legitimacy and the historical record in the early eighth century when the Nihon shoki was being compiled.

THE PLOT OF THE JINSHIN REBELLION

The Rebellion of the Jinshin Year (7) was a brief succession dispute that took place in 672, the year of the "yang water monkey" (mizunoe saru or jinshin (8) from which it takes its name. According to accounts in the official imperial chronicle, the Nihon shoki (Document Chronicles of Japan, 720), shortly before his death the ruler we know by his posthumous name of Tenchi (r. 662-671) offered his younger brother Prince Oama (631?-686) the throne. Oama declined, alleging ill-health, and suggested that Tenchi make his main consort (the childless Yamato-hime his successor and appoint his son Prince Otomo. (648-672) as crown prince. Oama then left the Omi capital to go and practice Buddhism at Yoshino, (9) south of the old capital of Asuka, and Tenchi died less than two months later. (10) In the summer of the following year, Oama received news from Mino province that Otomo was planning to attack him. He immediately set out eastward and with the help of his allies in Mino established a blockade in order to cut off the Omi capital from any potential allies in the east. The Omi armies were defeated in less than a month and Otomo committed suicide. Once the conflict was over, Oama pardoned the entire Omi court except for the top ministers in Tenchi's government, all of whom had sworn loyalty to Otomo. (11) The Minister of the Right, Nakatomi no Muraji Kane (12) (d. 672), was executed along with eight other people (presumably troublesome mid-ranking officials), and Minister of the Left Soga no Omi Akae Great Councilor Kose no Omi Hito, and the children of Nakatomi no Muraji Kane and Great Councilor Soga no Omi Hatayasu (who had committed suicide during the rebellion) were all banished. Having removed the entire upper level of the previous court's government, Oama--more commonly known as the ruler with the posthumous name of Tenmu (r. 672-686)--now held a degree of power unlike any ruler before him.

By making participation on the winning side a main criterion for the awarding of titles, rank, and office, Tenmu radically transformed the traditional configuration of political influence in the Yamato state. Such participation was memorialized in the account of the Jinshin Rebellion in the Nihon shoki, which lists the "original followers" who are with Tenmu from the very first day when he leaves Yoshino and sets out toward the east on the twenty-fourth of the sixth month of 672, as well as those who join him at their first stop at Aki in the district of Uda. In addition to his main consort Jito and their eleven-year-old son Prince Kusakabe (662-689), these include a small group of loyal retainers, of whom thirteen are listed by name. Later he is joined by more loyalists, who leave the Omi capital and join him at Tsumue (in Iga) and at the TO River (in Ise): his sons, the nineteen-year-old Prince Takechi (654-696) and the ten-year old Prince Otsu (663-686), as well some twenty-odd retainers, all of whose names are also listed. (13) As Tenmu's "followers," these men are the co-protagonists of the Jinshin campaign that is the foundation of Tenmu's imperial order, and thus are granted recognition and a central role in the imperial history. The names of many of these men reappear in the second Tenmu volume, which features numerous announcements of the deaths of those who "rendered service in the Jinshin year". In most of these cases the text emphasizes that Tenmu was "greatly shocked", "greatly saddened", or "greatly grieved" upon hearing news of their death, and it records their posthumous advancements in rank. A total of seventeen men are memorialized in this manner in the fifteen years of Tenmu's reign, with entries occurring almost every year. The ostensible purpose of these tributes and posthumous grants of rank was to recognize the men and reward their offspring, but they also seem to have functioned as continuous ritual commemorations of the Jinshin victory throughout Tenmu's reign. It is significant that while these tributes continue in decreased number throughout JitO's reign (the Nihon shoki records three instances in eleven years), in Monmu's reign (697-707) they increase again and appear almost yearly; the Shoku Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan Continued, 797) records eight instances in ten years, including a gift of fiefs to all those "subjects who served in the Jinshin year" in the first year of Taiho (701). (14) Service in the Jinshin Rebellion thus led to court office, higher rank, economic rewards, and historical recognition, which in turn served as unmistakable proof of office and rank for posterity. (15)

IMPERIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

What makes historiography imperial? Like Sima Qian's (145 or 135-89 B.C.) Shiji (J. Shiki, Records of the Historian, c. 100 B.c.E.), the Nihon shoki is a universal history that begins in mythological times and ends in the recent past. In most other respects, however, it is a dynastic history on the model of the Han shu (J. Kanjo, Documents of the Han, c. 92 c.E.) and Hou Han shu (J. kanjo, Documents of the Later Han, c. 432 c.E.). The Nihon shoki's conception of imperial historiography, like that of its Sinic dynastic models, is founded upon the ideal of comprehensively chronicling the emperor's acts. "The Treatise on Arts and Letters" (C. Yiwenzhi, J. Geimonshi) in the Han shu describes this ideal as follows:

As for the kings in ancient times, each reign had its...