We continue to look at the life and times of Uno no Sarara, aka Jito Tenno, female sovereign ruling in her own right. We look at some of the places she traveled to as sovereign and, ultimately, what she did to ensure that her grandson would succeed her.

For more, check our podcast blog page: https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-154

Rough Transcript

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua and this is episode 154: Queen Uno no Sarara, Part II

Light drifted in from outside the grand audience hall. It filtered through barred windows and screens, and glinted off of bright gold and bronze accents, as well as the polished stone floor. Upon a raised dais, surrounded by curtains, sat the tennou, arrayed in all of his youthful majesty. Before him were princes and high ranking nobles, dressed in their finest court clothing. Rich brocades of silk and black gauze hats only added to the pomp and circumstance of the moment.

The nobles bowed and brought out a small tray. Upon it were seventeen scrolls, freshly made, representing the latest updates to the laws and punishments of the land. The nobles presented the work they had overseen, the culmination of a year's effort to further bring into line the organization of the state.

Off to the side, behind a screen of her own, Uno no Sarara watched the proceedings. She thought back on all that had happened to bring them to this point. This glittering hall was a far cry from the plain wooden structures of the old Kiyomihara palace. And while she had never visited them, she could only imagine that this must rival the courts on the continent. Everything that she and her husband had worked and fought for—all of the battles they had fought, and all of the friends and children they had lost—she watched as it all came to fruition.

The court was never going to be entirely peaceful—there would always be those striving for wealth and power, however they could attain it—but at this moment she no doubt felt as confident as she ever had that her efforts hadn't been for naught. No matter what happened from here, the State, and her line, would continue.

So let's recap: We started with Part I of Uno no Sarara's reign back in episode 152, and then last episode we took a bit of a detour to go more in depth on the history of Ise and of the worship of Amaterasu more generally. We talked about how there is good reason to believe that Ise shrine's prominence—and even many of the stories about Amaterasu and her importance in the story of the royal family—were either created or at least emphasized during the reigns of Ohoama and Uno no Sarara. We ended with a discussion of the Jingikan, the newly created government organization developed to deal with so-called "Kami Matters", formally bringing the administration various shrines under the administration of the State. Specifically it seems to have focused on State sponsored rituals. I have no doubt that they took charge of the rituals at court itself, and they were likely involved in the worship at Ise Shrine, as well as the shrines of Tatsuta and Hirose. On the other hand, as with the spread of Buddhist temples, direct State control was likely limited, at least at this stage, likely focused on the most influential institutions.

This episode I want to continue with Uno no Sarara's reign. She continued to make her mark on the court, tweaking how things worked, especially around the concept of rank. And then there were her various travels. These were mostly to her palace in Yoshino, but several other journeys, including a tour of the land of Kii—modern Wakayama prefecture—as well as a visit to her half-sister, Royal Princess Asuka. For all of that, however, the entry in the Nihon Shoki ends with what was perhaps one of the most direct and unique things she did: Ensuring a smooth transition of power to her grandchild, Prince Karu. And while in this episode we'll (spoiler alert) cover both this power transition and Uno no Sarara's eventual death, we won't be done with her reign and its impact after this episode. After all, there is still a lot going on around this time, and multiple different threads to pull on. I expect several more episodes to cover things, such as the creation of hunting and fishing preserves, Buddhist merit-making, crime and punishment, and more. There are also a few more people to talk about, such as Kakinomoto no Hitormaro, the court poet, and Fujiwara no Fubito and the establishment of the Fujiwara family as we know it.

So let's take a look at Uno no Sarara and what she was up to.

She was still very much putting her stamp on things, tweaking the codes and making edicts. One of the more impactful edicts would seem to be one where she had the government officials and people of the Home provinces all divided into nine classes. This seems to be introducing yet another rank system, though this one is a bit more technical than the ones that came before.

For one thing, it divided everyone up into nine ranks. To do this, the court were going to take a look at a period of up to 6 years for those who already had rank and up to 7 years for those who did not. The court—presumably court appointed judges—would use that period to evaluate individuals and slot them into a new system of nine classes. Those in the first four classes would be given cap-rank based on their individual merits, the services that they had performed, and the importance of their house. There isn't really a mention about the other five classes, but as they were theoretically the lower classes of society, it may not have been quite so pertinent. BTW, of the three things that they were using to determine cap-rank, that last one, the importance of the individual's house, strikes me as the nod to the fact that the Japanese had not yet gotten away from the idea of "kabane" type hierarchy. Granted, it isn't like family was unimportant in the Tang court, the Japanese were just being much more blatant and direct about it.

Once everyone was properly sorted into the appropriate cap-rank, new edicts were issued on the official court clothing, which we discussed in Episode 150, and if you check out the blogpost you should be able to see what that looked like.

I would note that the cap-rank system would eventually go away and be replaced by a rank system also based on 9 ranks, which then were broken up into upper and lower and junior and senior, so very similar to what we see with cap-rank, with some slight changes.

Uno no Sarara continued to make tweaks to the system, while working on the various large scale projects of the reign. She wasn't exactly a homebody, however. As she did all of this, she was regularly taking trips away from the capital.

For example, between 689 and 697 she took at least 30 trips to visit Yoshino, sometimes taking as many as five trips in a year. These were often short—a couple of days and then back to the grind of the court. However, that's all that we get. Based on the dates, we can at least make a few inferences. For one, she was going down in all seasons, so she really must have enjoyed it, and it doesn't seem like it was attached to any particular official date or ritual. Perhaps it just got her away from the pressure of official life.

Some of her travel appear to have been work trips. Her travel to Ise, which we talked about in the previous episodes, as well as things like traveling to visit the Castle of Takayasu and also to inspect horses at the embankment of Wani-no-kami. Those appear to have been both trips where she was keeping an eye on things. Other trips, however, provide fewer details. Mostly we know where she went. This included trips to Hatsuse, Kii, Takamiya, and Yonabari, in Uda. We are also told she ascended the Peak of Tou no Mine and later that she made another journey out to the Futatsuki Palace—presumably at the same place. And we also have a trip out to the country-house of Royal Princess Asuka.

Now Hatsuse, Kii, and Uda are all places we've previously talked about. They are all on the Kii peninsula. Hatsuse—or Hase—and Yonabari, in Uda, are both due east of modern Sakurai, following the Yamato upriver and then branching off to the aptly named Yonabari river. These areas are well-referenced in the rest of the Nihon Shoki.

"Kii" is a bit more ambiguous. Kii refers to the entire land of Kii, or Kii no Kuni—by the way, if you are familiar with the Japanese bookseller "Ki-no-kuni-ya", that name directly references the land of Kii as the family who started it were from Wakayama in Kii, where they served under the Kishu—or Kii—branch of the Tokugawa family during the Edo period. That said, there were others who also used the name "Kinokuni" as a locative name as well, and you will occasionally see it here or there, even outside of the famous bookstore.

The land of Kii is basically all of the so...