
YAMATO EXPANSION 135
constituent communities; (3) a king or queen had a sacred relationship
to,
and was the chief priest or priestess in the worship of, his or her
guardian kami, just as the head of each constituent community con-
ducted the worship of its community kami; (4) a state kami stood
above (but did not replace) the kami worshiped by the heads of petty
states;
(5) a king or queen was often succeeded by a son or daughter;
and (6) the centralization process was associated with, if not acceler-
ated by, an increasingly widespread use of iron tools and weapons.
Clans of the fifth-century Yamato system, as well as its chieftain and
kami, developed and functioned somewhat like groups formed at the
earlier (second) stage of centralization, but with differences arising
from their special relations to the growth and development of Yamato.
The groups formed at this later stage - possibly called
uji
by a Yamato
king - were probably located in and around the Nara plain. They are
thought to have retained much of the social character of early Yayoi
agricultural communities and of petty states or state-federations that
had begun to emerge in Kyushu toward the middle of the Yayoi pe-
riod, but they were transformed into u/i-like lineal groups by familial,
religious, economic, and military ties with the Yamato kings. As the
Yamato kingdom gained more wealth and power, such groups, again
fundamentally altered by the functions they performed as parts of the
Yamato control system, appeared in regions outside the Nara plain.55
The Nihon
shoki
carries many references to clans in its chapters on
the reigns of Yamato's first kings, but such lineal groups probably did
not become strong instruments of regional control until around the
time of King Yuryaku in the fifth century. Words included in two
fifth-century inscriptions supply unmistakable evidence that the uji
had become basic units in the Yamato system. The first is on a bronze
mirror bearing a date identified as
443,
a mirror possessed by the Suda
Hachiman Shrine in Wakayama Prefecture. The forty-eight Chinese
characters inscribed on it include the name and title of Kawachi no
Atai. Kawachi is thought to be the name of a clan, and Atai the
kabane
title bestowed on its head by a Yamato king. The second fifth-century
55 Deductions regarding clan roots are based on a consideration of (i) Tsude's conclusions in
"Noko shakai no keisei," pp. 117-58, concerning the nature of agricultural life in the Yayoi
period; (2) Harada Toshiaki's studies, Nihon kodai shuhyo: zoho kaitei han (Tokyo: Chuo-
koronsha, 1970); and Nihon kodai shukyo (Tokyo: ChQokdronsha, 1971) of religion and
society in ancient times; (3) Inoue Mitsusada's ideas in Asuka no chotei, vol. 3 of Nihon no
rekishi
(Tokyo: Shogakkan, 1974), pp. 22-36, on the early development of clan and Kabane;
and (4) Kadowaki Teiji's studies, "Kodai shakai ron," Kodai, vol. 2 of Iwanami koza: Nihon
rekishi (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1975), pp. 332-77, of the social side of the centralization
process. Kiley surveyed postwar studies of the nature and development of clans and
kabane
in
his "State and Dynasty," pp.
27-31.
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