Soga no Iname

Who They Were

Soga no Iname (蘇我稲目, そが の いなめ) was a statesman of the Yamato court who lived from 506 to 22 March 570, during the Kofun period. He led the Soga clan (蘇我氏, そがし), one of the great noble houses of early Japan, and he was the first person to hold the office of Ōomi (大臣, おおおみ) whose tenure can be verified with reasonable accuracy, beginning in 536.

The Ōomi was the senior minister of the Yamato court, the paramount position below the sovereign. Iname was the son of Soga no Koma, and he built the Soga family into the dominant force at court through a combination of office, marriage, and religious patronage. He was an early advocate of Buddhism in a court where the established clans regarded the foreign faith with suspicion.

Life and Career

Iname's rise rested on his control of the Ōomi office and on the marriages he arranged for his daughters. He married two of them, Soga no Kitashihime and Soga no Oanegimi, to Emperor Kinmei. Between them the two women gave birth to three future sovereigns — Emperor Yōmei, Emperor Sushun, and Empress Suiko — along with numerous other princes and princesses. By placing his daughters in the imperial bedchamber, Iname made the Soga the maternal line of the next generation of the throne.

His most consequential act was his sponsorship of Buddhism. According to the Nihon Shoki (日本書紀, にほんしょき), the chronicle compiled in 720, Buddhism reached the Yamato court from the kingdom of Baekje on the Korean peninsula in 552. A different source, the Jōgū Shōtoku Hōō Teisetsu (上宮聖徳法王帝説), dates the introduction to 538. Iname received Buddhist statues sent from Baekje and built the first Buddhist temple in Japan in his home at Mukuhara, known as Kōgen-ji (広厳寺, こうげんじ) or Mukahara-dera (向原寺, むかはらでら). The site is in present-day Asuka, Nara. Archaeological and architectural remains found in the Mukuhara compound are treated as evidence of Buddhist activity in Japan before the first full-scale Japanese temple was built in 588.

The temple provoked a crisis. Soon after it was built, a plague broke out. Mononobe no Okoshi and Nakatomi no Kamako opposed Iname and the acceptance of the new religion, and Okoshi convinced the emperor that the plague was a punishment sent by the Shinto gods for Iname's conversion. In 552 Okoshi's forces burned the temple down and threw the sacred statue of the Buddha into a canal at Naniwa in Yamato Province. The statue was thrown into the water only after Mononobe tried and failed to destroy it with hammers. Buddhist records hold that after Mononobe reported the destruction of the temple and statue to Emperor Kinmei, a sudden thunderstorm broke and lightning struck the palace, setting it on fire.

Why They Matter

Iname turned the Soga clan into the decisive power at the Yamato court, and he did it in a way that outlasted him. The rivalry he began with the Mononobe and Nakatomi clans ran for generations. His son Soga no Umako defeated Mononobe no Moriya, Okoshi's son, in 587. The line ended badly for the family: Iname's grandson and great-grandson, Soga no Emishi and Soga no Iruka, were destroyed by Nakatomi no Kamatari, a descendant of Kamako, in the Isshi incident.

His religious patronage also shaped the dynasty. His granddaughter Empress Suiko and his great-grandson Prince Shōtoku were both champions of Buddhism, and it was under their sponsorship that the faith took root in Japan rather than being extinguished as a foreign cult. The temple Iname built, and the persecution it suffered, mark the opening of that struggle.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 蘇我稲目, read そが の いなめ in kana, and romanised as Soga no Iname. The の (no) between the clan name and the personal name is a possessive particle, the standard way of linking a family to an individual in classical Japanese naming.

• 蘇 — read so here. The character originally denotes revival or coming back to life; as a surname element it is used for its sound. It gives the clan its name, Soga.
• 我 — read ga here. Its everyday meaning is "I" or "self". In this name it is also phonetic, completing the two-character clan name 蘇我.
• 稲 — read ina. This is the character for rice plant, the grain that anchored the Japanese economy and ritual calendar.
• 目 — read me. Its basic meaning is "eye". In this compound it is read for sound rather than sense.

So the clan name 蘇我 is a two-character written form, while the personal name 稲目 carries the image of a rice plant, an appropriate element for a family whose power rested on the agricultural wealth of the Yamato plain.

Legacy

The temple Iname founded left physical traces. The present location of Kōgen-ji, also called Mukahara-dera, is in Asuka, Nara, and remains excavated from the Mukuhara compound are cited as evidence of Buddhist practice in Japan before 588. The site of the statue's disposal is remembered in Osaka, where the house is still known as Hori-e Machi. The statue itself is preserved at Zenkō-ji (善光寺, ぜんこうじ) in Nagano.

Iname's descendants carried his project forward. Empress Suiko and Prince Shōtoku presided over the court that made Buddhism a permanent part of Japanese state religion, and the Soga clan remained the leading ministerial house until the Isshi incident ended its dominance. The name Soga no Iname is remembered as the point at which the office of Ōomi became verifiable history and at which Buddhism entered the Japanese court for good.