Himiko and Japan's Elusive Chiefdom of Yamatai: Archaeology, History, and Mythology

by J. Edward Kidder Jr

The third-century Chinese chronicle Wei zhi ( Record of Wei ) is responsible for Japan’s most enduring ancient mystery. This early history tells of a group of islands off the China coast that were dominated by a female shaman named Himiko. Himiko ruled for more than half a century as head of the largest chiefdom, traditionally known as Yamatai, until her death in 248. Yet no such person appears in the old Japanese literature. Who was Himiko and where was the Yamatai she governed? In this, the most comprehensive treatment in English to date, a senior scholar of early Japan turns to three sources―historical, archaeological, and mythological―to provide a multifaceted study of Himiko and ancient Japanese society.

Genres: History, Japan, Nonfiction, Archaeology

418 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2007

Reviews

[Daniel Halliwell]

I highly recommend this book for students of Japanese history, as I feel that it tackles a rather obscure period in great detail. I do, however, recommend that the reader already have a strong understanding of Japanese history as well as a basic understanding of the science of archaeology.

[CivilWar]

A Japanese person's first instinct would be to look at this book and go "Oh wow, people still write books on where Yamatai is located? And it's in English now too, has Yamatai mania made its way over there?"

If you know anything about Himiko an Yamatai, it is that she was a mysterious shamanic queen of the Japanese Yayoi period, the Japanese bronze and iron ages, and that there is a neverending debate if Yamatai was in fact Yamato, or if it was located in Kyushu. This aroused enormous interest back in the 70s, but the lack of definitive answers and the neverending arguments have made the public cynical, for the Japanese media takes any find as an Ancient Aliens-esque easy answer for the problem.

Well, Kidder's book here is not the result of an amateur addressing the question, now in English for the first time: it is a certified encyclopedic history and overview of the archaeology, history, mythology and academic debates around the Yayoi period. If you had to read one book on the Yayoi period, I think I would recommend this one, the only one that is any competition being Kaoru Terasawa's Ōken Tanjō. It has everything, from archaeological overviews of Jomon, Yayoi and Kofun time periods, to a brief insight into the beliefs of the Yayoi people, to the Wei Zhi text, translated and annotated, to an excellent and detailed narration of the entirety of what I call the "Yayoi Epos" i.e. the joint narratives of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki that match the years covered in the Wei Zhi text, in many ways the most active ones: Jingu, Sujin, Keiko and Yamato-Takeru, etc. Just like in Greece, the bronze age for Japan is the era of myth and saga.

Some heavy points have to be deduced from the fact that Kidder commits that terrible sin of prehistorical historiography of taking mythology and mythological conflicts as thinly veiled representations of real conflicts, either ethnic or religious. He takes the entire episode of the "conceding of the country" to have been representative of a real religious conflict between Yamato and Izumo, centered around its kami, when I am afraid that this is a lot of ink spilled over nothing, for Atsuhiko Yoshida has conclusively shown that this entire mythic cycle is simply the result of an extreme degree of Indo-European influence upon Japanese mythology and religion and that the conflict between the deities is nothing less than the "war of the functions", like the Titanomachy or the Aesir-Vanir war, and reflects realities no more historical than that.

In fact, Kidder puts too much faith in the mythology, and refuses to accept that most of these don't date to the Yayoi period but are clear Indo-European inventions, considering the blatant trifunctionality shown in rulers such as Sujin. He describes "Chinese influence" in the adulatory speeches without realizing that their entire reigns actually reflect Indo-European ideals. He dismisses Egami Namio's horse-rider theory out of hand without considering that more work has been done with the archaeology and history that make it match much better - and how could the mytho-historiography of ancient Japan, down to its very structure, be so similar to that of the Scythians without any influence, just as a coincidence? Specially when Yayoi imagery is so radically different from that of the historical period myths? He dismisses too much of this out of hand, and takes too much of the mythology at its word.

That said, it is impressive how acutely Kidder studies the mythology even if he misunderstands its origins. He notes that although what I have called the "Yayoi Epos" is not historically accurate at all, the psychology exhibited in it nonetheless matches perfectly with what is said in the Wei Zhi text:

Even if we acknowledge the filtering of the Japanese material through centuries of storytelling and elaboration,we find a psychologically insecure mentality that acts only after divination, depends on the interpretation of dreams, looks for signs and omens to guide future action,explains ordinary occurrences (such as diseases) as the work of hostile spirits, sees life in inanimate objects with nefarious potential, and believes in physical transformation.Taken altogether this overarching fear of malignant spirits,as the Chinese saw in Himiko’s power,is an apt characterization of the prevailing atmosphere of the time.

This is all true, and this analysis of the Kiki myths by Kidder, that they cannot be said to be historical, but they accurately capture the zeitgeist of the Yayoi period, may be considered a useful contribution to mythography studies as well. Specially interesting to me was this couple of comments on the Mt. Miwa cult:

The religious practices of the Miwa area went through three stages: first, the pre-Izumo and pre-Mononobe stage, during which the local deities had a faunal character; second, when the deities were anthropomorphized and personalized, as the Miwa-Mononobe families sorted out the deities and organized and regularized the rituals; and third, the later historical stage, when tradition perpetuated the rituals and made adjustments to local cultural interests.

In the earliest stage, the snake cult was recorded as ancient history. This stage is illustrated in the descriptions of Yamato-takeru’s movements. At every turn, spirits in faunal guise threatened his progress, blocked the road, set forest fires, stirred up adverse weather conditions, or caused his incapacitation.All hindrances were taken as personally directed acts of nature occasioned by spirits disturbed of their natural repose.The kami, as superiors with delicate emotions, demanded humility in their presence, properly conditioned responses, and respectful treatment.A sincere sense
of awe was required.This Miwa mountain was covered with iwakura, the abode of these fearful spirits. With so many iwakura unapproachable and perhaps, through fear, not even all explored, the whole mountain became one religious symbol known as the all-embracing òkami, ‘the great deity’.That embodied the unspecified, and was the grassroots stage,before efforts to name and therefore to grade the kami. The cult was communal—characteristic of Yayoi cults of early agricultural groups— the ceremonies probably performed by the local chieftain.

This strikes me as true and pointed my attention to the fact that the kami faced by Yamato-Takeru, taking the shape of a white boar and a white deer, both don't show up anywhere else in the Kojiki (meaning we're not dealing with just usual Shinto imagery) and they are the most common animal (deer) seen in Yayoi period art, with the boar no too far behind.

As such, this means that these myths of these eras are a curious concoction, at once Indo-European ideological constructions, characterized by the trifunctional ideology, an Indo-Iranian pantheon structure, earthly heroes being the historicized, "earthly equivalent" of gods that are their functional equivalent in the tripartite schemata, etc, yet they retain much of the psychology, practices, beliefs and traces of the religion of the Yayoi times, managing to capture that milieu accurately (its history, less so) as far as attitudes and practices are concerned. It is an Indo-European/Yayoi mixture then, and how curious is that? Although I disagree with Kidder's decision to take any of this mythology as history, his arguments that they capture the era well are convincing and they drove me towards other insights on Japanese mythology, showing that these mistakes were well worth it.

Kidder ultimately puts Yamatai in Yamato and Himiko's tomb at Hashihaka, where the legendary miko Princess Yamato-totohi-momoso is said to be interred. Back in the 2000s, a team from the National Museum of Japanese History excavated the outskirts of the Hashihaka kofun. According to their carbon 14 dating, the kofun seems to have been made between 240 and 260. The Wei Zhi text records Himiko sent her envoy to China in 239 and most scholars agree that she died in 248. Kidder’s conclusions, therefore, are still valid by recent archaeological evidence.

[Raymond Paquette]

This was a very technical book. Without a background in the areas described I would have been totally lost. Kidder uses information from Chinese and archaeological sources to trace the time period in which Himeko lived and extrapolated from there the most likely place that served as the location of the Yamatai.

I enjoyed reading it and it brought me back to my education, which wish I had kept up. I have also visited some of the areas mentioned in the book and it has let me see them in a new light. I want to revisit them with the knowledge I now possess and find some of the secrets they are holding.