Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey by Marie Mutsuki Mockett

certainly something you can say about Japanese hanging out in an izakaya in the middle of modern-day Tky.
    In this same document, the Chinese recorded that a queen named Himiko was chosen to rule over the land of Wa, after its many tribes spent years engaged in warfare. Scholars and feminists find the story of Himiko intriguing because it suggests that long after the rest of Asia had undergone by transformation from matriarchy to patriarchy—a process expedited in China and Korea due to the early adoption of patriarchal Confucianism—women in ancient Japan could still hold significant leadership roles. Indeed, Japan’s early history is filled with empresses before the men completely take over.
    Up until the sixth century, “Wa” is written with the following Chinese character:. Like all Chinese characters, “Wa,” or, can be thought of as a picture. To the left, the figurerepresents a person standing upright. Then we have the two shapes on the right. The top piece,, represents a grain of rice, with a head bowing over from its stalk. Beneath this is, or woman. Together, a “grain of rice” and “a woman” are meant to conjure a picture of a woman bending over her work in a field of rice. Put all these pieces together, and the characteror “Wa,” means “bent over” or “submissive” or “docile.”
    Here is a further description of Wa, also taken from “History of the Kingdom of Wei”: “Over one thousand li to the east of the Queen’s [Himiko’s] land, there are more countries of the same race as the people of Wa. To the south, also there is the island of the dwarfs where the people are three or four feet tall. This is over four thousand li distance from the Queen’s land. Then there is the land of the naked men, as well as of the black-teethed people. These places can be reached by boat if one travels southeast for a year.” There is no doubt in these passages who represents the advanced,civilized country and who are the somewhat amusing and backward people.
    In the seventh century, the Japanese began to compile an “official history,” the Nihon shoki, completed in 720 AD . It is believed that large parts of the Nihon shoki preserved stories that had been previously passed on by storytellers. But the Nihon shoki is most certainly a partly fabricated work, written to give the impression that Japan had a long and legitimate history, like the much admired, if also feared, China. For example, the Nihon shoki claims that Japan’s first emperor was Jimmu, who ruled circa 660 BC and from whom the current emperor is said to be descended. This picture of a peaceful Japan under the continuous rule of one imperial family does not match the picture painted by Chinese scholars of an island nation inhabited by dwarves with blackened teeth and made up of clans who frequently fought with each other.
    Scholars today believe that ancient Japan—or Wa—was in fact inhabited by numerous clans, just as the Chinese historians say. Over time, a few families gained prominence. Ultimately, the Yamato became the most powerful clan. If the name “Yamato” sounds familiar to you, it should; Japan’s imperial family is descended from the old Yamato clan, making it the oldest royal household still in existence. Today, court officials help to maintain the fiction that Yamato was always in charge of Japan, though the truth is that by 500 AD , when Buddhism arrived, Yamato had the upper hand but wasn’t the exclusive power. Japan was not yet a unified country.
    T HE GREAT C HINESE emperor Ch’in Shih Huang Ti (221 to 210 BC ) is famous for building the Great Wall of China. This massive structure would be destroyed and rebuilt numerous times over the ensuing centuries, but enough of it was rebuilt and repaired in the centuries after Ch’in Shih Huang Ti’s reign to ensure that the flowof immigration on the mainland was to the east, toward Japan, and not the west, toward China. By the sixth century AD , Japan and Korea