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6 DEPOSITS Yamato Takeru emerged from his tomb, morphed into a white bird, and flew toward the land of Yamato. The ministers accordingly opened the coffin, looked, and only the empty clothing was left, and there was no corpse. —110. Nihon shoki Succession problems after Suiko, who died in 628, were serious enough for a council of officials to convene and decide on a new sovereign. TheirchoicefellononeofBidatsu’ssecond-generationdescendants,Jomei, who was in turn succeeded by Kōgyoku/Saimei and Kōtoku, both three generations removed from Bidatsu (see figure 1). The brothers Tenji and Tenmu, as sons of Jomei and Saimei inheriting the throne on shaky genealogical grounds and, in addition, having the blood of eliminated rivals on their hands, appear to have attempted restoring some sort of double royalty through a dense web of endogamous marriages for themselves and their offspring (see figure 4). If the Kojiki had been finalized not in 712 but some thirty years earlier, one suspects that Tenji and Tenmu would have been included for their effort at reestablishing double royalty, the prevailing practice described in that text. By 712, however, the dynastic issue had changed drastically. It had been turned upside down. Now, the establishment of a futuretennōfromanon-royalmother,aFujiwara,neededlegitimation.This new problem may help explain several developments: the very timing of having the Kojiki presented to the throne, the absence of full genealogical data for the post-Suiko rulers in the Kojiki, and the introduction of neko elements as patterns in prehistorical times and postmortem signifiers for contemporary deceased sovereigns (Jitō, Monmu, Genmei, and Genshō). One additional reason for not formally including post-Suiko rulers in the Kojiki may have to do with the shifting ground of rulership. From the Nihon shoki, we know that Chinese elements were being highlighted from around mid-century (Kōgyoku, Kōtoku). Kōgyoku personally conducted a Chinese/Daoist-style rainmaking ceremony that proved more effective than a Soga Buddhist attempt. Kōtoku’s Taika edict of 646/2/15 (admittedly in the midst of Chinese-style reforms that, like the edict, may have been dated anachronistically) explicitly refers to Chinese mythological deposits | 133 rulers: the Yellow Emperor and his Mingtang and Yao, Shun, and Yu and the administrative measures they and the founders of the Shang and Zhou dynasties introduced. Moreover, when the nature of royal authority had to be symbolized publicly at the end of the reigns of the four consecutive mid-centurygreatkingsKōtoku,Saimei,Tenji,andTenmu(r.642–686)(or whenever their history was written), Heaven (ten or ame/ama) was chosen asthefirstcharacterforalltheirposthumousnames(seetable1).Thistrend culminated under Tenmu in the change of the ruler’s nomenclature from ōkimi (great king), to tennō (heavenly ruler). The subsequent move away from ten to neko in posthumous names must have signaled a shift in the concept of authority, from transcendental and supreme to one less imposing and more conscious of needed acceptance by the leading clans. The strong notion of ruling authority under Tenmu was articulated by Daoist signifiers, the subject of the next chapter. To understandthesignificanceofTenmu ’sconstructs,oneneedsfirsttoexaminethe pre-Tenmu history of these symbolics, which I shall do in this chapter. Daoistelementsliedispersedacrossthewritten record about pre-Tenmu Japan. Traditionally, some historians have gathered them as deposits from the past, embedded in layers of native custom, and have mined them for traces of Daoist practices in the archipelago. Others considered the ore too poor to yield anything of substance. I take the position that these elements are often less traces of the past than deposits in a different sense, that they weredepositedintherecordbythecompilersofthetextsinthelateseventh and early eighth centuries. AHistoriographicalConundrum Identifying Daoist elements in seventh-century Japan has become an increasinglyimportantendeavorincurrentJapanesescholarship ,frequentlya tricky exercise on slippery hermeneutic terrain. Such identification usually occurs at the expense of previous explanatory references to Buddhism or “Shinto.” Thus, for instance, arguments are being made for the predominantly Daoist iconographic components of the preserved fragments of Japan ’soldestembroideredtapestry,theTenjukokushūchōmandara,allegedly woven around the time of the wake (mogari) for Shōtoku Taishi and his mother in 622.1 Traditionally understood to be a visual representation of the Buddhist Pure Land as the realm where the prince, a legendary pillar of early-Yamato Buddhism, and his mother had migrated, there is no denying that it is replete with references to Daoist and Daoisant symbols such as turtles with graphs on their shells, a three-legged crow in the sun, and [18.216.123.120] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 02:05...

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