Ōjin Tennō

Japanese emperor (traditionally r. 270-310 c.e.)

• Born: Late fourth century
• Birthplace: Tsukushi, Kyūshū island, Japan
• Died: Early fifth century
• Place of death: Toyo-Akira, or Ohokuma Palace, Kinai region, Japan

The first verifiable historical emperor of Japan, Ōjin Tennō consolidated imperial power, developed the empire, and supported cultural and political connections with Korea.

Early Life

According to Japanese tradition, the man who long after his death would be given the name Ōjin Tennō (oh-jeen tehn-noh), or Emperor Ōjin, was born in January, 201 c.e. Scholars now agree that this is much too early and place his birth in the late fourth century c.e. By 2003, most historians agreed that the parents ascribed to Ōjin in the earliest written Japanese histories are legendary figures, perhaps composite characters drawn around real people. The semimagic events around Ōjin’s early life are similarly discounted as nonhistorical.

According to legend, about six months before his birth, Ōjin’s father, the emperor Chūai, had died suddenly. This occurred after Chūai expressed his disbelief in a divine prophecy of the sun goddess Amaterasu, spoken through the mouth of his pregnant wife, the empress Jingū. Initially, the goddess had promised the emperor that he would conquer Korea. Now she angrily told him that it would be his son who would inherit the three Korean kingdoms then in existence.

When Ōjin’s father died, Jingū kept this fact a secret. Dressed as a male warrior, she led an army, conquered Korea, and gave birth to her son the moment she returned to the Japanese island of Kyūshū. The baby was born with a flesh pad on his arm that looked like the protective leather shield worn by archers, and this was interpreted as a sign of his warrior nature.

After his birth, his mother outsmarted and defeated two hostile princes from the emperor’s relations with his concubines. At age two, Ōjin was made the official heir to the throne. He exchanged his given name, Isasawake, with a god, and was thus called Homutawake no Mikoto, or Homuta (Homuda) for short. As was customary, later generations gave him the name of Ōjin the emperor, and it is by this name that Japanese history has referred to him ever since. The boy grew up in the palace of his mother, Jingū, who gave banquets and held drinking games with her prime minister in his honor. Ōjin was quickly noted for his sharp intelligence and far-sightedness.

Life’s Work

According to tradition, Ōjin’s mother continued to rule for him until she died, and he did not become emperor until he was sixty-nine years old. Many historians believe that Ōjin was actually an outsider who took over the Yamato kingdom that formed the nucleus of the Japanese empire.

The oldest Japanese histories established the year of 270 as the start of Ōjin’s reign. Comparing the early Japanese dating of events that are also described in other, primarily Korean histories, scholars have come to believe that the first Japanese historians deliberately predated their early national history. In the case of Ōjin’s rule, scholars now believe that generally, two sixty-year cycles were subtracted from the true historical dates. Thus, his reign is most likely to have begun in 390 and to have ended in 430.

One year after he became emperor, Ōjin’s wife Nakatsuhime was appointed empress. They had three children together. Their oldest son, Ohosazaki, became his father’s favorite. Although he was not nominated to succeed Ōjin, Ohosazaki would become the next emperor and be given the name Nintoku. With his concubines, two of whom were the younger sisters of his wife, Ōjin had either twenty or twenty-six children. The Japanese sources of the eighth century spent considerable attention on his ample offspring, as many noble families of the seventh and eighth centuries later claimed these Imperial princes and princesses as the genuine founders of their clans. As some of these clan histories contained forgeries, not all of Ōjin’s children mentioned may have been real people.

In the first years of his reign, Ōjin consolidated his power and dedicated himself to domestic politics. He used the workforce of tributary people to build roads and ponds, improving the Yamato region. He also organized the guilds, called be in Japanese, of the fishermen and gamekeepers, securing food supply for his domain. As such, Ōjin stands out, compared to most other historical emperors who performed fewer practical tasks and concerned themselves mostly with religious ceremonies.

Ōjin also got involved in foreign affairs in Korea. Here, the Japanese had an interest of their own and intervened in the affairs of the three Korean kingdoms of the period. Japanese and Korean sources vary considerably both about the nature of these struggles and their exact dates. Japanese tradition, for example, has it that Sinsã, the king of Paekche, disrespected Ōjin and was killed by his own people to atone for this transgression in 272. A Korean source states that Sinsã died in his traveling palace while hunting, in the year 392. While the Korean date is believed to be correct, the nature of the king’s death is still subject to passionate debate between Japanese and Korean historians.

Ōjin continued his program of domestic improvements, often with foreign labor sent as tribute. He focused on shipbuilding and consolidation of his rule. There were also intrigues among the nobles. In 278 (traditional date), the man who had served as his father’s and his mother’s prime minister, Takechi no Sukune, was accused by his own younger brother of planning to usurp the throne. Sent to subdue a rebellion on the southwestern Japanese island of Kyūshū, Takechi secretly returned to the palace to defend himself. A judgment by ordeal involving boiling water was won by Takechi. However, Ōjin prevented the older brother from killing his younger brother afterward.

Ōjin’s private life fascinated his contemporaries. Falling in love with the beautiful Kaminaga Hime in 282 (traditional date), Ōjin nevertheless yielded the young woman to his favorite son, Ohosazaki. He presented her to his son at a special banquet, and father and son expressed their desires in poems recorded for eternity. When Kaminaga responded to Ohosazaki favorably and slept with him without resistance, his status at court rose accordingly. Later, Ōjin allowed his beloved concubine Yehime, whom he had courted with romantic songs, to visit her parents. Thus, he showed humanity to his family and his subjects.

Ōjin’s efforts at improving Yamato civilization also gained from his desire to have skilled professionals sent to Japan from Korea as tribute. The Korean seamstress Maketsu founded an important trade school, and the learned scribe Wani introduced writing to Japan. Historically, the Japanese acquired writing through Wani from the Chinese around 404, even though their legend uses the older, clearly wrong date of 284. Using Chinese characters to correspond phonetically to spoken Japanese, Japan finally became literary, a key event of Ōjin’s reign.

Throughout his remaining years, Ōjin continued to intervene in Korea, occasionally sending Japanese troops to install his Korean protégés as kings there. Korean sources tell a different story and provide more historically accurate dates falling in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Ōjin also demanded skilled immigrants to improve Japan’s manufacture and infrastructure.

The exact historical nature of Ōjin’s relationship with the three kingdoms of Korea is still a controversial issue in international scholarship. The traditional Japanese eighth century sources that Imperial Japan considered literal truth until 1945 are often contradicted by old Korean historical accounts. For 297, for example, Japanese history tells of a tribute to Ōjin by the North Korean state of Koguryo (or Kokuryo) that is accompanied by an insolent note. Even if the date is corrected by adding the usual 120 years, for 417, Korean historians have doubted that this kingdom would have sent tribute to Japan, with whom it was fiercely at war at that time.

Japanese legend has it that Ōjin lived well more than one hundred years, a life span that is not believed by most historians. According to Japanese tradition, when he was 107 years old, in 308 (traditional date), Ōjin received Shisetsu (Sin Chã To in Korean), the sister of the king of Paekche in Korea, as a fresh concubine.

Toward the end of his life, Ōjin gave clear preferences to his son Ohosazaki. Even as he appointed another son as heir apparent, he gave Ohosazaki a powerful position of his own, from which he would eventually become the emperor Nintoku. When Ōjin died, in 310 according to legend and most likely in the early fifth century in reality, he left behind an empire of considerable power.

Significance

Ironically, later Japanese generations made Ōjin the god of war, called Yahata or Hachiman. However, his most enduring accomplishments lie in improving the domestic situation of his empire and the introduction of writing to Japan. His interventions in Korean politics brought Ōjin many skillful immigrants from this area. Traditionally, his reign also provided Japan’s noble houses with many illustrious ancestors.

Indicative of the power, resources, and skills of the emperors of Yamato of Ōjin’s time are the many impressive burial mounts of the period. One of the earliest and largest mausoleums, in Habikino in Ōsaka prefecture, is traditionally believed to be Ōjin’s tomb. Like the others, it is built like a keyhole lying on the earth. It possesses three tiers, two moats, and two dikes. It is 1,362 feet (415 meters) long and rises over the plain landscape. Ōjin and his contemporaries’ graves gave the period of his reign its name, Kofun, which is Japanese for keyhole.

With Ōjin, Japanese Imperial history leaves the realm of legend and enters that of history. Even though there are still shrines in Japan venerating this emperor as the god of war, it is clear that he was a real person. His emphasis on domestic development and the improvement of the skills of his people advanced his nation, even though his office would become much more ceremonial in the decades and centuries to come, until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Ōjin’s kindness to his concubine Yehime is remembered as an important personal trait of this emperor, and his many children served Japanese nobility by legitimizing their position in society.

Bibliography

Aston, W. G., trans. Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan. 1896. Reprint. Rutland, Vt.: C. E. Tuttle, 1972. English translation of the Nihon Shoki (or Shogi) that contains one of the two original accounts of Ōjin’s life.

Brown, Delmer M., ed. Ancient Japan. Vol. 1 in The Cambridge History of Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Chapter 2, “The Yamato Kingdom,” contains an excellent historical account of the time of Ōjin’s rule and places his reign in the context of early Japanese history.

Farris, William Wayne. Sacred Texts and Buried Treasures. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998. Chapters 1 and 2 cover Japan’s historical relationship with Korea in the time of Ōjin’s rule. Excellent scholarly discussion of the textual and archaeological evidence for the events of his reign. Illustrated, with bibliography and index.

Philippi, Donald L., trans. Kojiki. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969. Most generally available English translation of the first written Japanese account of Ōjin’s life. However, Philippi’s unique transcriptions of ancient Japanese names alter their English spelling and take getting used to.

Tarō, Sakamoto. The Six National Histories of Japan. Translated by John S. Brownlee. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1991. Chapter 2, on the Nihon Shoki, contains an excellent discussion on the source materials used by Japanese historiographers. Pages 63-64 deal directly with Ōjin. Includes appendix, bibliography, index.