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This episode we will discuss various embassies to and from Yamato during the reign of Takara Hime, with a particular focus on the embassy of 659, which occured at a particularly eventful time and happened to be extremely well-recorded fro the period by Iki no Hakatoko, who was apparently on the mission to the Tang court itself.

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Rough Transcript

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is episode 123: Embassy Interrupted.



Iki no Hakatoko sat in his room, gazing out at the city. It was truly an amazing place, filled with all kinds of people from around the world. And yet, still, after 9 months of confinement, the place felt small. Sure, there he hadwere visits from ranking nobles and dignitaries, but even the most lenient of house arrests was still house arrest.

But that didn’t mean that he had nothing to do. There were books and more that he had access to—many that had not yet made it to the archipelago, and some of which he no doubt hoped he could bring back with him. And of course, there was paper, brush, and ink. And then there were the experiences he and others had acquired on this mission to the Great Tang. From the very beginning the missionit washad been plagued with disaster when they lost half of their ships and company mission to rogue winds on the open seas. Now they were trapped because the Emperor himself wouldn’t let them return home. They had experienced and seen so much, and that provided ample material for one to catalogue.

As the seasons changed, and rumors arrived that perhaps his situation would also something would change soon, Iki no Hakatoko spread out the paper on the desk in front of him, dipped his brush in the ink, and began to write. He wrote down notes about his experiences, and what had befallen him and the others. He had no idea who It is unclear whom he thought might read it, and if he was intending this to be an official or personal record, but he wrote it down anyway.

Hakatoko He couldn’t have known then that his words would eventually be captured in a much larger work, chronicling the entire history of Yamato from its very creation, nor that his would be one of the oldest such personal accounts records to be handed down. His Itwords wwould only survive in fragments—or perhaps his writing was simply that terse—but his words they would be preserved, in a format that was still being read over a thousand years later.





Last episode we finished up the story of Xuanzang and his Journey to the West—which is to say the Western Regions -- , and thence on to India, or Tianzhu, where he walked in the footsteps of the historical Buddha, studied the scriptures at the feet of venerable teachers, such as Silabadhra at the Great Monastery of Nalanda, and eventually wound up bringingbrought back hundreds of manuscripts to Chang’an to , which he and others be translated and disseminated, impacting Buddhist thought across East Asia. HisXuanzang’s travels lasted from around 629 to 645, and he was still teaching in Chang’an in the 650s when various student-monks from Yamato arrived to study and learn from him, eventually bringing back his teachings to the archipelago as part of the Faxiang, or Hossou, school of Buddhism.

Before that we talked about the visitors from “Tukhara” and “Sha’e” recorded in the Chronicles. As we noted, these peopley were morest likely from the Ryukyuan islands, and the names may have been conflated with distant lands overseas – but regardless, . Whether or not it was a mistake, this it does seem to indicated that Yamato had at least an inkling of the wider world, introduced through the continental literature that they had been importing, if not the direct interactions with individuals from the Korean peninsula and the Tang court.

This episode, we’re going to talk about some of the relations between Yamato and the continent, including the various embassies sent back and forth, as well as one especially detailed embassy from Yamato to the Tang Court that found itself in a bit of a pickle. After all, what did you do, back in those days, when you were and ambassador, and your country suddenly went to war? We’ll talk about that and what happened.

To reorient ourselves in time, we’re in the reign of Takara Hime, called aka Kyogoku Tennou during her first reign, who had reascended to the throne in 655, following the death of her brother, Prince Karu. The Chroniclers would dub her Saimei Tennou in her second run on the throne.

From the very beginning of her second reign, Takara Hime was entertaining foreign envoys. In 654, the Three Han of the Korean Peninsula—Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla—all sent ambassadors to express their condolence on the death of her brother, and presumably to witness her ascension. And in the 8th month...