This episode we start to get more into the material culture of the period with court fashion, as we look at the court robes that went along with the updated court ranks. Granted, we only have a few resources, but from those it does seem like we can construct at least a plausible idea of what the court may have looked like at this time.

For more discussion, check out the blogpost: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-137

Rough Transcript

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is Episode 137: Courtly Fashion.

In the New Year's ceremony, the court officials lined up in front of the Kiyomihara Palace, arranged by their relative court rank, dressed in their assigned court robes. The effect was impressive—the rows of officials painting the courtyard like the bands of color in a rainbow, albeit one with only a couple of hues. The fact that they were all wearing the same style of dress and black, stiffened gauze hats only added to the effect. The individual officers were all but lost in what was, at least in outward form, a single, homogenous machine of government, just waiting for the command of their monarch to attend to the important matters of state.

We are covering the reign of Ohoama no Ohokimi, aka Ama no Nunahara oki no mabito no Sumera no Mikoto, aka Temmu Tennou. Last episode we went over the changes he had made to the family titles—the kabane—as well as to the courtly rank system. For the former, he had consolidated the myriad kabane and traditional titles across Yamato into a series of eight—the Yakusa no Kabane. These were, from highest to lowest: Mabito, Asomi, Sukune, Imiki, Michinoshi, Omi, Muraji, and Inaki. By the way, you might notice that "Mabito" actually occurs in Ohoama's posthumous name: Ama no Nunahara oki no mabito, which lends more credence to the idea that that kabane was for those with a special connection to the royal lineage.

Besides simplifying and restructuring the kabane, Ohoama also reformed the court rank system. He divided the Princely ranks into two categories: Myou, or Bright, and Jou, or Pure. For the court nobles the categories were:

Shou – Upright

Jiki – Straight

Gon – Diligent

Mu – Earnest

Tsui – Pursue

Shin – Advancement

Each category was further divided into four grades (except for the very first princely category, Myou, which was only two). Each grade was then further divided into large, "dai", or broad, "kou".

And this brings us to our topic today. Along with this new rank system, Ohoama's administration also instituted a new set of court sumptuary laws. Some are vague in the record—we can just make assumptions for what is going on based on what we know from later fashion choices. Others are a little more clear. We'll take a look at those sumptuary laws, particularly those that were directly associated with the new court rank system, but we'll also look at the clothing styles more generally.

To start with, let's talk about what we know about clothing in the archipelago in general. Unfortunately, fabric doesn't tend to survive very well in the generally acidic soils of the Japanese archipelago. Cloth tends to break down pretty quickly. That said, we have fragments here and there and impressions in pottery, so we have some idea that there was some kind of woven fabric from which to make clothing out of.

And before I go too far I want to give a shout out to the amazing people at the Kyoto Costume Museum. They have a tremendous website and I will link to it in the comments. While there may be some debate over particular interpretations of historical clothing, it is an excellent resource to get a feel for what we know of the fashion of the various periods. I'll also plug our own website, SengokuDaimyo.com, which has a "Clothing and Accessory" section that, while more geared towards Heian and later periods, may still be of some use in looking up particular terms and getting to know the clothing and outfits.

At the farthest reaches of pre-history, we really don't have a lot of information for clothing. There is evidence of woven goods in the Jomon period, and we have Yayoi burials with bits of cloth here and there, but these are all scraps. So at best we have some conjecture as to what people were wearing, and possibly some ability to look across the Korean peninsula and see what people had, there.

There are scant to no reliable records from early on in Japanese history, and most of those don't really do a great job of describing the clothing. Even where we do get something, like the Weizhi, one has to wonder given how they tended to crib notes from other entries.

There is at least one picture scroll of interest: Portraits of Periodical Offering of Liang, or Liáng -Zhígòngtú. It is said to have been painted by Xiao Yi in the early 6th century, and while the original no longer exists there is an 11th century copy from the time of the Song Dynasty. The scroll shows various ambassadors to the Liang court, including one from Wa. The Wa ambassador is shown with what appears to be a wide piece of cloth around his hips and legs, tied in front. His lower legs are covered in what we might call kyahan today: a rather simple wrap around leg from below the knee to the foot. He has another, blue piece of cloth around his shoulders, almost like a shawl, and it is also tied in front. Then there is a cloth wrapped and tied around his head. It's hard to know how much of this depiction is accurate and how much the artist was drawing on memory and descriptions from things like the Weizhi or Wei Chronicles, which stated that the Wa people wore wide cloths wrapped around and seamlessly tied

As such, it may be more helpful to look at depictions actually from the archipelago: specifically, some of the human-figured haniwa, those clay cylinders and statues that adorned the burial mounds which gave the kofun period its name. Some of these haniwa are fairly detailed, and we can see ties, collars, and similar features of clothing. These haniwa primarily seem to cluster towards the end of the Kofun period, in the later 6th century, so it is hard to say how much they can be used for earlier periods, though that is exactly what you will typically see for periods where we have little to know evidence. I'm also not sure how regional certain fashions might have been, and we could very much be suffering from survivorship bias—that is we only know what survived and assume that was everything, or even the majority. Still, it is something.

Much of what we see in these figures is some kind of upper garment that has relatively tight sleeves, like a modern shirt or jacket might have, with the front pieces overlapping create a V-shaped neckline. The garment hem often hangs down to just above the knee, flaring out away from the body, and it's held closed with ties and some kind of belt, possibly leather in some cases, and in others it looks like a tied loop of cloth. There is evidence of a kind of trouser, with two legs, and we see ties around the knee. In some cases, they even have small bells hanging from the ties. Presumably the trousers might have ties up towards the waist, but we cannot see that in the examples we have. We also see individuals who have no evidence of any kind of bifurcated lower garment. That may indicate an underskirt of some kind, or possibly what's called a "mo"—but it could also be just a simplification for stability, since a haniwa has a cylindrical base anyway. It is not always obvious when you are looking at a haniwa figure whether it depicts a man or woman: in some cases there are two dots on the chest that seem to make it obvious, but the haniwa do come from different artisans in different regions, so there is a lot of variability.

We also see evidence of what seem to be decorative sashes that are worn across the body, though not in all cases. There are various types of headgear and hairstyles. Wide-brimmed and domed hats are not uncommon, and we also see combs and elaborate hairstyles depicted. On some occasions we can even see that they had closed toed shoes. For accessories, we see haniwa wearing jewelry, including necklaces (worn by both men and women), bracelets, and earrings. In terms of actual human jewelry, early shell bracelets demonstrate trade routes, and the distinctive magatama, or comma shaped jewel, can be found in the archipelago and on the Korean peninsula, where it is known as "gogok".

Based on lines or even colored pigment on the haniwa, it appears that many of these outfits were actually quite heavily decorated. Paint on the outfits is sometimes also placed on the face, suggesting that they either painted or tattooed themselves, something mentioned in the Wei Chronicles. We also have archaeological examples of dyed cloth, so it is interesting that people are often depicted in undyed clothing.

There is one haniwa that I find particularly interesting, because they appear to be wearing more of a round-necked garment, and they have a hat that is reminiscent of the phrygian cap: a conical cap with the top bent forward. These are traits common to some of the Sogdians and other Persian merchants along the silk road, raising the possibility that it is meant to depict a foreigner, though it is also possible that it was just another local style.

If we compare this to the conti...