Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (24 page)

The Mononobe and Soga clans are said to have fought on the banks of the Ekagawa river, in the eastern part of modern-day
saka. The clash was brief, and it decimated the Mononobe almost completely. In the account of the skirmish between the Soga and the Mononobe, the Nihon shoki does something quintessentially Japanese: it celebrates the Mononobe clan member Yorozu, his sense of duty, his loyalty to the emperor, and his warrior spirit, even though there is no doubt that Yorozu was on the wrong side of history. “The guardsmen raced up and shot at Yorozu, but he warded off the flying shafts, and slew more than thirty men. Then he took the sword, flung it into the midst of the water of the river. With a dagger which he had besides, he stabbed himself in the throat, and
died.” Such beauty in the face of tragedy, such steadfastness, would be the trademark of the Japanese warrior, even centuries later. It is a hallmark of the Japanese to have compassion not only for their own vanquished warriors, but also for anyone who gives everything he has in the face of insurmountable odds.

IV. THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN

In 592, Emperor Y
mei’s sister Suiko became empress. She appointed Y
mei’s second son, Prince Sh
toku, as her regent. Their long partnership, lasting until Sh
toku’s death thirty years later, would mark a period of stability and set the stage for Japan’s cultural maturation, when the land of Wa would turn into Japan, land of the rising sun.

Prince Sh
toku is one of those historical figures like George Washington and Queen Elizabeth I, someone who is so romanticized and inspires such passion that it can be difficult sometimes to separate fact from fiction. Among the more outlandish claims: Sh
toku was born in the doorway of a stable (a reference to Christ’s birth in the manger and a signal of Sh
toku’s historical importance); he was born speaking in complete sentences; he never made a single judgment in error. There is also a more plausible accomplishment, which we can partly confirm with documents: under Sh
toku, and starting in the T’ang dynasty of China (618–907
AD
), Japan took on a new name.

In lieu of
, the land of the submissive dwarves, Sh
toku used the character
for peace, which phonetically sounds the same as
, but he went even further. In 607, the Chinese reported that an envoy from Empress Suiko arrived and addressed China as the land “where the sun sets” and Japan as the country “where the sun
rises.” More specifically: “The Son of Heaven in the land where the sun rises addresses a letter to the Son of Heaven in the land where the sun sets. We hope you are in good health.” History tells us that such self-confidence displeased the Sui emperor, who berated the messenger. Over time, however, Japan’s reference to itself as the land of the rising sun—it was east of China after all—would be written as
, pronounced either “Nihon” or “Nippon” in Japanese.