Empress Yamato

Who They Were

Empress Yamato (倭姫王, Yamato no Ōkisai) was a poet and consort of the Japanese imperial line during the Asuka period (飛鳥時代, Asuka jidai, 538–710), the era in which Japan's court absorbed Buddhism, Chinese-style government and written literature. She was the wife of Emperor Tenji (天智天皇, Tenji Tennō), and the marriage produced no children. She was also his niece: her father, Prince Furuhito-no-Ōe (古人大兄皇子, Furuhito no Ōe no Miko), was a son of Emperor Tenji's father, which made Tenji her paternal uncle.

Through her father she was a granddaughter of Emperor Jomei (舒明天皇, Jomei Tennō) and Soga no Hote-no-iratsume (蘇我法提郎女, Soga no Hote no Iratsume), a woman of the powerful Soga (蘇我) clan. That double descent — from an emperor and from the Soga, the family that dominated court politics in the middle of the seventh century — placed her at the centre of the Asuka court. She is remembered above all as a poet, one of the small number of imperial women whose verses survive from this period.

Life and Career

Yamato's dated life is thin, but its outline is clear. She was born into the ruling dynasty in the middle of the seventh century; the Hakuchi (白雉, Hakuchi, "white pheasant") era, year 1, corresponds to 650, and is the era name associated with her. She married her uncle Tenji, who reigned as emperor from 668 until his death in 671. The marriage was childless.

Her husband's death in 671 triggered one of the sharpest succession crises of the Asuka period. Tenji had named his son Prince Ōtomo (大友皇子, Ōtomo no Miko) as heir, but Tenji's brother Prince Ōama (大海人皇子, Ōama no Miko) contested the succession, and the dispute was settled by force in the Jinshin War (壬申の乱, Jinshin no Ran) of 672. Ōama prevailed and took the throne as Emperor Tenmu (天武天皇, Tenmu Tennō). In the interval between Tenji's death and Tenmu's accession, Yamato is believed to have served as a ruler in the interregnum — holding the court together in the gap between one reign and the next.

After her husband's death she wrote a song of mourning for him. That poem, and others attributed to her, are preserved in the Man'yōshū (万葉集, Man'yōshū), the oldest surviving anthology of Japanese poetry, whose compilation is associated with Ōtomo no Yakamochi (大伴家持, Ōtomo no Yakamochi). Her surviving work places her among the earliest named women poets of the Japanese tradition.

Why They Matter

Yamato matters for two reasons, one political and one literary. Politically, she belongs to the moment when the Japanese throne passed from Tenji to Tenmu through civil war. Her role in the interregnum shows that the court could be held by an imperial woman in the absence of a settled male successor — a pattern that recurs in Asuka and Nara history and that would culminate, generations later, in a series of reigning empresses.

Literarily, she is one of the earliest Japanese women whose poems survive under her own name. The Man'yōshū preserves the work of a comparatively small number of women from the seventh century, and Yamato is among them. Her mourning song for Tenji is a rare first-person document of grief from the Asuka court, written by a woman who had just lost both a husband and, briefly, the political order he represented.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 倭姫王 and read やまと の おおきさい (Yamato no Ōkisai). It breaks down as follows.

• 倭 — read here as Yamato. This is one of the oldest Chinese characters used to write the name of Japan; in early texts it also appears as 大和, read the same way. The character originally referred to the Yamato region of central Japan, the heartland of the early court, and by extension to Japan itself. Its use in a personal name signals membership in the ruling lineage of that region.
• 姫 — read here as hime, meaning "princess" or "noblewoman." The character is common in the names of women of high birth and survives in modern Japanese as a word for a young lady or, in compounds, a princess.
• 王 — read here as ō, meaning "king" or "sovereign." In the names of early imperial women, 王 marks royal rank rather than a specific throne; the same character appears in the names of princes and princesses of the period.

The full title 倭姫王 therefore reads as a name plus rank: Yamato, a princess of the Yamato royal line. The reading Ōkisai (おおきさい) is an early title for an empress or consort of the highest rank; the element ō ("great") recurs in early court titles. Note that the name is often given in the longer form 倭姫王 with the possessive particle の inserted in reading, hence Yamato no Ōkisai — "Yamato, the great consort."

Legacy

Yamato's legacy is carried almost entirely by her verse. The Man'yōshū, compiled in the eighth century, is the foundational text of Japanese poetry, and its inclusion of her mourning song for Tenji keeps her name alive in the literary record long after the political details of the interregnum faded. The poem is read today as one of the earliest examples of the Japanese elegy written by a woman.

Her position in the succession — an imperial woman holding the court between the death of Tenji and the accession of Tenmu — also makes her a forerunner of the reigning empresses of the Asuka and Nara periods. She is remembered less as a ruler in her own right than as a poet who stood at the hinge of one of the most violent transitions in early Japanese history, and who wrote about it in her own voice.