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7 ARTICULATIONS Tenmu was skilled in astronomy and the art of invisibility. —Nihon shoki The group of four consecutive rulers from Kōtoku to Tenmu are memorialized in the Nihon shoki with posthumous names opening with a reference to Heaven such as Ame yorozu toyohi and Ame toyo takara ikashihitarashihime,“HeavenMyriadAbundantSun”and“HeavenAbundant Treasure Grand Sun Bountiful Princess” for Kōtoku and Kōgyoku. The new practice continued with Tenji and Tenmu’s posthumous names. In addition, almost a century later, when the court in late Nara allocated two-graph names to all past rulers, Heaven was further highlighted in the names of the brothers Ten-ji and Ten-mu (“Heavenly Wisdom” and “Heavenly Warrior”). Also, Emperor Kanmu, whose powerful and long reign (781–806) overshadows in importance that of his predecessor, Emperor Kōnin (r. 770–781), the restorer of the Tenji line, paid particular ritual attentiontoHeaven (kōtenjōtei)tothepointofofferingChinese-styleanimal sacrifices (gisei) to Heaven on two occasions at the winter solstice.1 One has the impression that the appeal to Heaven coincides with the troubled beginnings of both the Tenmu and Tenji dynasties. Of course, this focus on Heaven became most prominent in the new identity of rulers during their lifetime as tennō, starting with Tenmu. Tennō owes its origin in good part to Daoism, where the cosmological heaven of the asterisms occupies a prominent place. The new form of royal power constructed in the late seventh century was an articulation of Daoist mythemes. Tennō Three stages mark the development of the tennō title and its association with astral symbolism in China: the Western Han, the Daoist Taiping movement of the Eastern Han, and the Tang dynasty. Sima Qian (?–85 BCE), in a famous passage, used the Pole Star region as a metaphorical field to understand the central cosmic role played by the emperor (di): articulations | 155 The Northern Dipper is the wagon of the emperor. It moves around the center and thus governs the four cardinal directions; it separates the yin and the yang and regulates the four seasons; it maintains the Five Elements in equilibrium ; it moves time forward across its periodic divisions and determines all regular movements. All this is connected to the Northern Dipper.2 Slightlylater, toward the end of the Western Han, “heavenlyruler”made its appearance in the weft texts of the apocrypha. There, it refers to the supreme cosmic deity that resides in the Purple Palace, located in the handle of the Little Dipper, from where he controls the four directions.3 By then, the Heavenly Ruler Great Emperor (Tennō taitei) had been further identified with the Great One or Great Monad (Ch. Taiyi; Jp. Taiitsu).4 Toward the mid-second century, under the Taiping, religious identifications were believed to be achieved by ascetic practices of transcendentals. They were transformed into perfected ones, then into spirit people (Ch. shenren; Jp. shinjin), and finally, as Sovereign Heaven (Ch. Huangtian; Jp. Kōten), acquired the same shape as the Supreme Ruler of Heaven in the Purple Palace.5 Traditionally, we are accustomed to think of Chinese emperors as sons of Heaven (tianzi/tenshi), not heavenly rulers. There is one intriguing exception , however, when rulers in both China and Yamato, at the same time, used tianhuang/tennō. A mokkan constitutes hard evidence that in Yamato tennō was used during Tenmu’s reign. In 674, however, the year following Tenmu’s accession to the throne, Gaozong, the third Tang emperor (r. 650–684), changed his title from huangdi (Jp. kōtei)6 or “august emperor/ god” to tianhuang (Jp. tennō), and that of his main consort from huanghou (Jp. kōgō), “august queen,” to tianhou (Jp. tenkō), “heavenly queen.”7 Gaozong ’s posthumous title was Tianhuang dadi (Jp. Tennō taitei) (Heavenly Ruler Great Emperor/God), which is the title that Emperor Xuanzong bestowed on Laozi, the legendary founding father of the Tang ruling house of Li.8 There are three possible sources for the Japanese tennō: the Han weft texts, the Taiping religious texts, and the Tang emperor’s adoption of the title. The Han weft texts are the most likely candidate, but the possibility remains that the contemporaneous adoption of tennō by the Tang and Yamato rulers might point to Gaozong as the inspiration for Yamato. Even though between 669 and 702 no embassies left for China, there was a monk who had crossed over to China in 653 and returned via Silla in 678, and others in 684 who might have brought back...

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