Princess Nukata

Who They Were

Princess Nukata (額田王, Nukata no Ōkimi) was a Japanese poet of the Asuka period, the era that ran from 538 to 710 and saw the consolidation of a centralised Japanese state, the arrival of Buddhism, and the first great flowering of Japanese literature. She is one of the earliest named poets in the Japanese tradition, and one of the earliest named women writers anywhere in East Asia.

Her life is dated to roughly 630 to 690, though the surviving record does not fix her birth or death. She was the daughter of Prince Kagami (鏡王, Kagami no Ōkimi) and her mother was Fukikitoji. She was a member of the imperial clan by birth, which is why she carries the title ōkimi (大王/王), a word meaning "great lord" or "prince" that in the Asuka period was applied to members of the ruling house.

She is remembered above all as a poet, and her poems survive in the Man'yōshū (万葉集, Man'yōshū), the oldest extant anthology of Japanese poetry, compiled in the eighth century. She was also, by the record of her marriages and children, a woman at the centre of the most consequential political family of her age.

Life and Career

Nukata was married to three men, all of them prominent in the politics of the Asuka court. Her husbands were Emperor Tenji (天智天皇, Tenji Tennō), Emperor Tenmu (天武天皇, Tenmu Tennō), and Nakatomi no Ōshima (中臣大嶋). Tenji and Tenmu were brothers, and their reigns bracket one of the most turbulent stretches of early Japanese history, including the Jinshin War of 672, a succession struggle that Tenmu won.

She bore Tenmu a daughter, Princess Tōchi (十市皇女, Tōchi no Himemiko), who would later become the consort of Emperor Kōbun (弘文天皇, Kōbun Tennō). Through this daughter Nukata was tied directly into the imperial line of the late seventh century.

A well-known legend holds that she was also consort to Emperor Tenji, Tenmu's elder brother. The claim has no evidence behind it, and it is best treated as a story that grew up around her name rather than as a fact of her life. What is certain is that she moved in the innermost circle of the Asuka court, and that her poetry was composed for and about the people in that circle.

Why They Matter

Nukata matters for two reasons: her poetry and her position.

As a poet, she is among the earliest Japanese writers whose work can be attached to a named individual. The Man'yōshū preserves a small number of her poems, and they are among the most admired in the anthology. Her verse is associated with the courtly exchange poem, a form in which two people trade verses on a shared occasion — a hunt, a journey, a season, a parting. This makes her work a window onto how poetry functioned in the Asuka court: not as private self-expression but as a social and political act, a way of marking relationships and occasions.

As a woman, she stands near the beginning of a long tradition. Japanese literature of the classical period is unusually rich in writing by women, from Nukata in the seventh century through the Heian-period authors of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Nukata is one of the earliest names in that line, and her survival in the record is part of why later women writers had a tradition to inherit.

Her position at court also makes her a useful figure for understanding the Asuka period itself. The era saw the Soga clan's dominance, the Taika Reforms of 645, the establishment of a Chinese-style bureaucracy, and the Jinshin War. Nukata was connected by marriage to the emperors at the centre of these events, and her poems are among the few surviving first-person traces of that world.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 額田王.

• Kana reading: ぬかたのおおきみ
• Romaji: Nukata no Ōkimi (also written Nukada no Ōkimi)

Breaking the name down character by character:

額 — read here as nuka. The character means "forehead" or "brow," and by extension "a framed plaque" or "a fixed amount" (as in a sum of money). In this name it is used phonetically, for its sound rather than its meaning, which is common in Japanese place names and personal names of the early period.

田 — read here as ta. The character means "rice field" or "paddy." Combined with 額, it forms the place name Nukata, a district in what is now Aichi Prefecture, east of the old capital region. Early Japanese noblewomen were often named for the place associated with their family, so Nukata identifies her by origin rather than by a personal given name.

王 — read here as ōkimi (in the compound 大王 it is read ōkimi; standing alone it is also read ō). The character means "king" or "ruler." In the Asuka period, before the title tennō (天皇, "emperor") came into general use, ōkimi was the title of the sovereign and also applied to princes and princesses of the imperial house. Used after a name, it marks the person as a member of that house.

The particle の (no) sits between Nukata and Ōkimi. It is the possessive and descriptive particle, so the full name means something like "Ōkimi of Nukata" — the princess of the Nukata line. This is why English sources sometimes render her as "Princess Nukata" and sometimes as "Nukata no Ōkimi."

Legacy

Nukata's legacy rests on a handful of poems that have been read, copied, and commented on for well over a thousand years. Her verses appear in the Man'yōshū, and they are studied in Japan as some of the foundational examples of Japanese poetry. The imagery in them — the fields, the seasons, the movements of the court — became part of the shared vocabulary of later Japanese verse.

She is also remembered as a figure of the Asuka court's inner life. The legend that she was consort to Emperor Tenji, unsupported as it is, has kept her name alive in popular retellings and in the imagination of later centuries. That a story with no evidence behind it attached itself to her at all is a measure of how prominent she was.

For readers of Japanese, her name is a compact lesson in how early Japanese names worked: a place name, a possessive particle, and a title of rank, with the kanji chosen as much for sound as for sense. She belongs to the small group of Asuka-period figures whose voices survive in their own words, and she is the earliest woman among them.