Ōnakatomi no Kiyomaro

Who They Were

Ōnakatomi no Kiyomaro (大中臣清麻呂) was a Japanese noble and courtier of the Nara period, born in 702 and dead on 6 September 788. He was the seventh son of Nakatomi no Omimaro, a chūnagon (中納言, chūnagon — a senior court councillor, one of the emperor's closest advisers), and of Tajihi no Akira. His mother's family, the Tajihi, and his wife, Tajihi no Konane, both belonged to the same clan, so his marriage and his maternal line ran through the same house.

He rose to shō ni-i (正二位, shō ni-i — Senior Second Rank, the second-highest grade in the court's ranking system) and to the office of udaijin (右大臣, udaijin — Minister of the Right, one of the two chief ministers who stood just below the chancellor). He founded the Ōnakatomi clan, a branch of the older Nakatomi clan, and gave it its name.

Life and Career

Kiyomaro was born in 702, in the Taihō era (大宝, Taihō — the era name in force in year 2 of that era). His father Omimaro served as chūnagon, which placed the family inside the top tier of the court bureaucracy from the start. Kiyomaro was the seventh son, so he did not inherit the headship of the Nakatomi main line.

He changed his name and established the Ōnakatomi clan, a cadet branch that carried the Nakatomi name with the prefix ō- (大, "great"). This was a common move for a younger son of a great house: it kept the prestige of the parent clan while giving the new line its own identity and its own claim on court office.

Over a long career he accumulated rank and post, ending at Senior Second Rank and Minister of the Right. He died on 6 September 788, having lived eighty-six years by the count of his birth and death years.

He had five recorded sons: Ōnakatomi no Morouo, Ōnakatomi no Koro, Ōnakatomi no Sukemaro, Ōnakatomi no Tsugimaro, and Ōnakatomi no Imamaro. Through them the Ōnakatomi line continued at court.

Why They Matter

The Nakatomi clan was one of the great houses of the Asuka period, the era of the court's early consolidation, and Kiyomaro's career spans the transition from that world into the Nara period, when the court settled at Heijō-kyō and built the bureaucratic state whose ranks and ministries he served in. His father Omimaro held the office of chūnagon; Kiyomaro reached the summit of the same ladder as Minister of the Right.

Founding the Ōnakatomi clan mattered because it created a durable branch of the Nakatomi that survived on the strength of its own officeholders rather than the parent house's standing. The clan's name, with the honorific ō-, marked it as the senior offshoot, and his five sons carried it forward.

His rank of Senior Second Rank is the concrete measure of his standing. In the court ranking system of the time, rank determined precedence, salary, and access to the emperor, so a noble who reached Senior Second Rank and a ministry had arrived at the effective top of the non-imperial aristocracy.

The Name in Japanese

The full name is written 大中臣清麻呂. It is read in kana as おおなかとみ きよまろ, and in romaji as Ōnakatomi no Kiyomaro. The の (no) that appears in the romaji is a possessive particle linking the clan name to the personal name; it is normally written as の in kana and not shown in the kanji form.

Breaking it down character by character:

• 大 — read here as おお (ō). It means "great" or "large." In this name it is a clan prefix, marking the Ōnakatomi as the "great" or senior branch of the Nakatomi.
• 中 — read here as なか (naka). It means "middle" or "inside."
• 臣 — read here as とみ (tomi). It means "retainer" or "subject," and it is an ancient hereditary title (kabane) borne by clans that served the early court. Together 中臣 (Nakatomi) is the name of the parent clan.
• 清 — read here as きよ (kiyo). It means "pure" or "clear."
• 麻 — read here as ま (ma). It means "hemp." In old personal names it was used for its sound rather than its meaning.
• 呂 — read here as ろ (ro). It means "spine" or "backbone," and like 麻 it served mainly as a phonetic element in names.

So the name as a whole means, roughly, "Kiyomaro of the Great Nakatomi." The personal name 清麻呂 (Kiyomaro) is a compound: 清 contributes the sense "pure," while 麻呂 is a stock name-ending of the period, written with characters chosen for sound. The clan name 大中臣 (Ōnakatomi) is transparent in a way the personal name is not: it is simply the old clan name 中臣 with 大, "great," placed in front.

Legacy

The clearest legacy is the clan itself. The Ōnakatomi, founded by Kiyomaro when he changed his name, continued through his sons Morouo, Koro, Sukemaro, Tsugimaro, and Imamaro, and remained a presence at the Nara court. His own career — seventh son of a chūnagon, ending as Minister of the Right at Senior Second Rank — is the record of how a cadet branch of an old clan could convert a name change into a place at the top of the government.

He died on 6 September 788. The dates of his life, 702 to 788, place him across the whole of the Nara period's central decades, and his offices tie him to the court institutions that defined it.