Chapter 8 Japan 303ing rice cultivation with them, and then moved south into the Philippines (at
least on linguistic evidence; see chapter 2), there is reason to suppose that the
Ryukyus, Okinawa, and Japan itself may also have received immigrants from
the Chinese coast.
In the gap between Queen Himiko in the third century and the powerful
Empress Suiko (reigned 592–628) who reestablished relations with China in the
early seventh century, the Yamato State flourished. Its center in the beginning
was the Nara Basin, a region of 720 square miles from crest to crest of the fring-
ing mountains. The Yamato River drains the basin into Osaka Bay directly to the
west, and five peaks rise from the circle of hills; the most important one, then and
now, is Mt. Miwa. The Yamato kings established ritual ties with local deities
known as kami, probably carrying on very ancient folk beliefs and practices but
now investing them with political significance. The kami of Mt. Miwa spoke to
kings through royal women, even as Himiko had had paranormal connections to
the kami. The Nihon Shoki tells of a love affair between the kami of Mt. Miwa and
Princess Yamato Totohi Momoso. And Emperor Sujin received a revelation from
a kami transmitted to him through a princess demanding worship to avoid future
calamities. The Kojiki tells of a sacred marriage of the Miwa kami to a female rel-
ative of an early Yamato king from whom was born a son who founded the
Miwa line of kings and worshipped the Mt. Miwa kami (Brown 1993:117–118).
Shrine attendants later at Ise were called miko (shamaness) and were unmarried
imperial princesses, like Himiko herself, and even today, young unmarried girls
called miko dance for the kami at village shrines on festival occasions.
As the Yamato state became more vigorous, new institutions emerged,
which further strengthened it. One of these was the development of powerful
clans, called uji, among the chieftains close to the king. Some of these uji took
on specialized functions in relation to the king; for instance, the eldest son of
Emperor Suinin founded the Mononobe clan, which became the military arm
of the kingdom, while his younger brother became Emperor Keiko. This mili-
tary arm made expeditions northward and carried out strikes against Korea
over several centuries of successful expansion. They had their own kami cult at
Isonokami, located in the Nara Basin region, whose worship included weap-
ons as the shrine’s principal treasures. At the Isonokami storehouse today is a
famous slightly rusted, gold-inlaid sword called the shichishito, or the “seven-
pronged sword.” A high priest at the Isonokami shrine in 1873 discovered it
had inscriptions on it, which turned out to bear a date, 369 C.E., and a state-
ment that it was forged in Paekche (Korea) for presentation to the king of Yam-
ato. (Unfortunately, seven of the characters were too rusty to read, the very
ones that would clarify whether the gift was tribute to a superior state or a
token of honor bestowed on an inferior state.)
Just as we saw in China, where large lineages came into existence only in
certain kinds of economic and political contexts, the uji came into existence after
the fifth century among expanding elite families who were branching out to con-
trol ever larger and more distant areas. In the Nara Basin, each clan appears to