Назад
YAMATO EXPANSION 127
found
77
iron swords,
62
iron arrowheads,
203
iron
sickles,
and numer-
ous other iron implements.«'
The view that a fifth-century ruler was more like a secular ruler than
a priestly king is further substantiated by what is recorded in Nihon
shoki and Kojiki chapters on Ojin and Nintoku, two Yamato kings
buried in the Kawachi-Izumi area. Unlike the chapter for the earlier
Sujin reign, which is replete with myths about special ties between the
Yamato rulers and local kami, the Ojin and Nintoku chapters include
very few references to kami. Instead they concentrate on such secular
matters as receiving envoys from Korea, gathering immigrants for
building ponds, accepting tribute, going on royal hunting expeditions,
coping with royal love affairs, settling conflicting claims to the throne,
establishing title to rice lands, putting down a Emishi rebellion in
northern Japan, building palaces and irrigation systems, and raising an
army to invade Silla. The Nihon
shoki
does include an item about a
first-of-the-year festival, but most of it is devoted to comments about
the ladies drinking sake during the festivities and adorning themselves
with jewelry.*
One ceremony held at the beginning of
a
new reign was religious in
character but did not involve the worship of a local kami. Called the
Yasojima festival and scheduled for the year after enthronement, it was
focused on priests and miko (shamans) proceeding to the capital at
Naniwa where the souls of the Yasojima ("eighty islands") were ritu-
ally attached to the current Yamato king. In associated rites and
myths, the islands of Onogoro and Awaji are prominent, and instead of
honoring a local kami, the Yasojima festival underscores a Yamato
king's origins in distant places of the Inland Sea. Ueda notes that
Awaji was also prominent in the Izanami-Izanagi creation of the Japa-
nese islands and that the mysterious birth of Ojin - born to Jingu after
her return from a victorious campaign in Korea - linked kami "from
across the sea" to such distant lands as Izumo.
43
The fifth-century shift in the locus of power to the Kawachi-Izumi
area, coupled with the concurrent military expansion and agricultural
development, has sharpened interest in the view that Yamato was then
headed by a new line of rulers. Few historians have gone so far as to
say that this was when horse-riding invaders seized control and started
a new royal line, but most would agree that a break appeared in the
Yamato kings' line of descent, a break that is suggested by the "across
41 Ueda, Okimi no seiki, p. 247.
42 Bks. 10 and 11, NKBT 67.362-417; Aston, I. 254-300.
43 Ueda, Okimi no seiki, pp. 239-41.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
128 THE YAMATO KINGDOM
the sea" character of the Yasojima festival. One cannot help but see, in
this connection, significance in the way Japan's early chronicles intro-
duce Ojin - the first Yamato king after the break - as the son of the
mythical and shamanistic Queen Jingu. The Kojiki contains the follow-
ing version of a dialogue among her, the Sun Goddess (the ancestral
kami of Japan's emperors), and the ritualist who was conducting a
Great Exorcism held after the death of Chuai and while Jingu was
pregnant:
Sun
Goddess to
Jingu: This land is the land to be ruled by the child that
is in your womb.
Ritualist to
the
Sun
Goddess:
Awesome great kami, what sex is the child
inside in the kami (possessed) womb?
Sun
Goddess to
Jingu: A boy.
Ritualist to
the
Sun
Goddess:
What is the name of the great kami who
speaks?
Sun
Goddess to
Jingu: This is the will of the Sun Goddess, and of the
three sea kami . . . [worshiped at Sumiyoshi].**
The Nihon shoki contains lengthy stories of Jingu's receiving guidance
and support from various kami during her overseas campaign against
the Korean kingdom of Silla and about the miraculous birth of Ojin.
Although it does not say that the Sun Goddess divinely selected Ojin
as the future "ruler of the land," it does state that "when [Ojin] was in
his mother's womb, the kami of heaven and earth granted him three
Korean provinces."
45
A study of the names of the Yamato kings also suggests that a new
descent line began with Ojin. After noting that the Yamato kings did
not have clan names, Ueda calls our attention to the practice of insert-
ing the word iri into the names (imina) of kings descended from Sujin.
Then he notes that iri disappears from the names of kings after Ojin
and that this king and his successors were given names that included
the title wake. The earner iri (entered) tide suggested that a kami of
Miwa was believed to have entered (or divinely possessed) each king
on a descent line beginning with Sujin, whose burial mound is thought
to be one of those located at the foot of Mt. Miwa. But wake, used in
the personal name of Ojin and his successors and denoting divine
possession, was mythically linked to kami worshiped at shrines as far
north as the prefectures of Fukui and Noto. So the wake title and its
associated myths may indicate the start of a new royal line connected
44 Bk. 2, NKBT 1.229-31; Philippi, Kojiki, bk. 2. chap. 93, pp. 259-61.
45 Ojin, Introduction, NKBT 67.362; Aston, 1. 255.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
YAMATO EXPANSION 129
with the coastal regions north of the Nara plain. The mysterious,
distant, and sea-connected origins of Ojin are also embedded in tradi-
tions of his being born to the shamanistic Jingu in northern Kyushu
and arriving at Naniwa in a boat.
46
The military strength and material wealth of fifth-century Yamato
arose in large measure from great increases in the production of rice.
Historians have long been fascinated by a Nihon
shoki
item for the
fourteenth year of the Nintoku reign telling about the construction of
a great canal that channeled water from the Ishikawa River to unculti-
vated areas of four Kawachi districts: Upper and Lower Suzuka and
Upper and Lower Toyura. This vast irrigation project apparently in-
creased the area of land devoted to rice production by several thousand
acres,
enriching the peasants and alleviating the threat of poor crops.*
7
Because the Nihon
shoki
was compiled over two centuries later, histori-
ans have wondered whether the compilers did not assign to the
Nintoku reign an event that occurred much later. But archaeologists
have recently discovered a canal (the Furuichi no Omizo) and found
that repairs on it may have been made early in the fifth century.
Because the canal was dug near the burial mound thought to be that of
Ojin (the king whose reign immediately preceded that of Nintoku) and
repairs may have been made on the canal around the time this mound
was built, earlier suspicions about the veracity of the Nihon shoki
reference have been partially dispelled.*
8
Other chronicle items report
the construction of canals, ponds, and dikes during the reign of
Nintoku.
Contributions made by immigrant technicians to boosting rice pro-
duction is revealed in the Kojiki's outline of Nintoku's accomplish-
ments. Although the account is devoted mainly to the women he
married and the children he sired, the final sentences report the
establishment of particular
be
(occupational groups) and end with the
statement that a Korean group was conscripted to complete several
irrigation projects, including building the Mamuta River embank-
ment and digging two ponds and two canals.** The Nihon
shoki
also
contains a story about the Mamuta embankment that, according to
the Kojiki, had been constructed by a Korean group. Inserted in a
Nihon shoki entry for the eleventh year of the same Nintoku reign,
the story is introduced with comments about the difficulty of repair-
ing two breaks in the Mamuta dike.
46 Ueda, Okimi no seiki, pp. 75-87, 220-8, 246.
47 Nintoku
14/11,
NKBT 67.396; Aston, 1. 283. 48 Ueda, Okimi
no
seiki, pp. 242-3.
49 Bk. 3, NKBT 1.265-7; Philippi, Kojiki, bk. 3, chap. 109, pp. 301-2.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
I3O THE YAMATO KINGDOM
One night,
as
the tale goes, Nintoku dreamed that the breaks could
be repaired
if
two of
his
officials, one from eastern Japan and one from
Kawachi, made offerings
to
the river kami. The two men approached
the kami differently. While the easterner threw himself into the river
as
a
sacrifice, the Kawachi man (probably an immigrant), after tossing
a gourd into
the
river, vowed
to
sacrifice himself only
if the
gourd
sank. The gourd simply drifted
off, and yet
the dike was successfully
repaired without
an
additional sacrifice
of
life.*
0
This story
is
usually
cited when analyzing changes in Japanese attitudes toward kami, but
it
also reveals Nintoku's preoccupation with the importance of irrigation
projects that increased rice production
and
with
the
value
of
immi-
grants who knew how to build and repair dikes. On the basis
of
such
evidence,
it is
concluded that kings
of
fifth-century Yamato were able
to extend their control
to
other regions
of
Japan
and to
Korea
not
solely because
of
their more extensive
use of
imported military tech-
niques
but
also because of economic benefits accruing from
the
work
of immigrants
who
knew
how to
construct
and
maintain irrigation
systems.
The fifth-century prominence
of the
Naniwa harbor
and of the
Sumiyoshi Shrine
-
both located
on
the shore
of
the Inland Sea
to the
west
of
Izumi and Kawachi
in
the southern part
of
Settsu
-
also point
to Yamato involvement in military and commercial activities in regions
along
and
beyond
the
Inland Sea. Situated
at the
mouth
of
the great
Yamato River, Naniwa became, during
the
fifth century,
an
active
harbor
for
all seaborne traffic with such important western regions
as
Kibi, Tsukushi,
and
southern Korea. Although
we
have
no
detailed
reports
on the
number and size
of
boats that entered and left Naniwa
in those years,
the
port's importance
is
reflected
in
the myth that tells
of Ojin's arriving there by boat and also
in
chronicle reports that both
Ojin and Nintoku had built palaces there. The discovery of huge fifth-
century burial mounds
in
Kawachi and Izumi has led
us
to determine
that Yamato expansion was based mainly on newly developed agricul-
tural land
in
those
two
provinces.
But it is
clear that much
of
this
military expansion
and
economic growth involved
the
transport
of
soldiers and goods through the port
of
Naniwa.
Just as the Yamato kings buried before about
A.D.
350
at
the base of
Mt. Miwa were thought to have had sacred ties with kami residing on
that sacred mountain,
and
those buried farther north between about
350 and 400 were linked with the Isonokami Shrine,
the
fifth-century
50 Nintoku 11/4/16, NKBT 67.392-4; Aston, 1. 82.
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YAMATO EXPANSION 131
kings of Kawachi and Izumi had mythological and ritual ties with the
kami enshrined at Sumiyoshi, even though the secular functions of
kings had become more important than their sacral functions. Like
Naniwa, Sumiyoshi faces the Inland Sea and has had an "across-the-
sea" character. Archaeologists have not yet found offerings made to
Sumiyoshi in the middle years of the Yamato period, but connections
between Ojin and Sumiyoshi are suggested by the myth that "gold and
silver lands beyond the sea" were bestowed on Ojin by the Sumiyoshi
kami while he was in his mother's womb and by the myth that Izanagi
and Izanami (divine creators of the Yamato king descent line) gave
birth to the Sumiyoshi kami.
Although the prosperity and expansion of
fifth-century
Yamato must
have made members of the court's governing elite more interested in
secular affairs than in kami mysteries, persons in high places were
surely impelled - at those early stages of thought and belief concerning
group leadership - to reinforce their authority with affirmations of
be-
lief in the kami that had a mysterious power to dispense benefits at
crucial times and places. The Yamato kings of that day were constantly
immersed in the task of obtaining materials, techniques, and techni-
cians from - and establishing military and administrative control
over - lands located along and beyond the Inland Sea. And for such
endeavors the position and character of Sumiyoshi kami were propi-
tious:
The shrine faced the
sea,
and
its
kami,
believed
to
have sacred ties
to the Yamato king line of descent, were thought to possess a strange
and marvelous power to make any overseas venture successful.
Outlying
regions
Although the Yamato kings buried on the Nara plain had extended
their control to a substantial portion of Japan's main islands in the
previous fourth century, Ojin and his successors of the fifth century,
operating from a powerful new center along the shore of the Inland
Sea, obviously exercised firmer control over more territory than did
their predecessors.
In an attempt to show how control was established and maintained,
Shiraishi has concentrated on archaeological evidence obtained from
large mounds erected in distant Upper Kenu, an area between the
cities of Maebashi and Ota in Gumma Prefecture. Mounds thought to
have been built there in the fourth century are between 120 and 130
meters long, but those constructed in the fifth century are larger, less
numerous, and have the same square-in-front and round-behind style
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
132 THE YAMATO KINGDOM
of those built in the provinces of Kawachi and Izumi. The three
largest of these Upper Kenu mounds are (i) the Sengen-yama (in the
city of Takasaki), 171 meters long and probably built at the beginning
of the fifth century; (2) the Bessho Chausu-yama (in the eastern part of
the Upper Kenu area), 165 meters long and erected somewhat later in
that century; and (3) the Tenjin-yama (in the present city of Ota),
measuring 210 meters, the largest mound found in the whole of the
Tohoku region, which was constructed around the middle of that
same century.
Shiraishi has concluded that these three mounds were not for the
burial of
local
leaders, as the earlier and smaller mounds had been, but
for successive heads of an Upper Kenu federation of
clans.
To him the
evidence also suggests that the power of persons buried in these
mounds was not based primarily on control over a particular local
group but on ties with the Yamato kings. These ties are most clearly
revealed in the discovery that the body buried in the last and biggest of
the Upper Kenu mounds (the Tenjin-yama) had been placed in a long
stone coffin that was precisely like those made then in Kawachi and
Izumi, suggesting that the artisans had come from that great distance
to make coffins in the Kawachi-Izumi style. And this in turn provides
support for the conclusion that leaders of eastern Japan were develop-
ing increasingly close ties with the Yamato court.*
1
All the mounds erected in Upper Kenu after the middle of the fifth
century, following the completion of the great Tenjin-yama mound,
were smaller. Shiraishi thinks this was not due to a restoration of a
fourth-century type of leadership but to the tendency for local dignitar-
ies to become enmeshed in the Yamato control system, probably
through fictive family ties with individuals standing in pivotal posi-
tions at court. Such local representatives of the central court were,
however, still in firm control of the local populace, as is suggested by
clay figurine
(haniwa)
representations of grand funeral processions and
by the remains of grand residences (surrounded by moats) built at
about the same time.*
2
It is felt, however, that after the construction of
the large Tenjin-yama mound, the principal source of strength for
most high officials of Upper Kenu, as well as in other parts of the
Kan to region, no longer came from their positions as leaders of
a
local
petty state federation (which probably has been dismantled by then)
but from their positions as local representatives of the Yamato court.
Particularly concrete and convincing evidence of such
a
development
51 Shiraishi, "Nihon kofun bunka ron," pp. 178-9. 52 Ibid., pp. 179-82.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
YAMATO EXPANSION 133
is provided by a sword (inscribed with a date thought to be 471) found
recently in the Inariyama mound, south of the Tone River in Saitama
Prefecture. Grave goods accompanying the sword and the body, pre-
sumably belonging to the sword's owner, indicate that the Inariyama
mound was not built for the owner of the sword but for an earlier
chieftain. The sword inscription reveals that it had been possessed by
the head
(kashira)
of a sword wielders' group (a
be)
that guarded the
palace of the current Yamato "great king"
(okimi).™
Local military
officials such as the owner of this sword were appearing in other parts
of
Japan as well,
a
conclusion reinforced by the discovery of another fifth-
century inscription-bearing sword excavated from
a
mound in southern
Japan. The inscription on this sword, taken from the Edafuna-yama
burial mound near the present city of Kumamoto, has not yet been fully
deciphered, but it definitely contains the two characters for okimi,
indicating that its possessor, like the owner of the Inariyama sword in
northeastern Japan, was a Yamato agent in the southwestern region.
Thus we can be quite sure that Yamato kings like Yuryaku had ex-
tended their control to most of Japan during the fifth century.'"
Mechanisms of control
The system that the fifth-century kings of Yamato devised for extend-
ing and maintaining their hold over more land and more people, first
on the Nara plain and then beyond, can now be sketched. What we
see,
far more clearly, is the rise of
a
network of local units and offices
incorporated, centuries later and after considerable change, into a
sinicized
ritsuryo
legal system.
Uji and
Kabane.
At the base of the system were agricultural communi-
ties that had probably come into existence at the time of the introduc-
tion and spread of wet-rice agriculture, when flat and well-watered
land was first developed for the cultivation of rice in paddy fields.
53 This gold-inlaid sword, found in 1978, was studied by Inoue Mitsusada, Ono Susumu, et al.,
Shimpojium tekken no nazo to kodai Nihon (Tokyo: Shincho, 1978); and its 115-character
inscription was translated (omitting the names of the owner's ancestors) in An Introductory
Bibliography for Japanese Studies, vol. 4, pt. 2, p. 1. Although many problems raised by the
inscription have not been resolved, it still is an extremely valuable source. It contains (1) the
oldest known Japanese genealogical record, (2) characters for "great king" (okimi) preceded
by a name identified as that of Yuryaku, (3) the name of a warrior group thought to have been
a be, and (4) a kabane title. It has become a basic reference for the study of many important
developments in the fifth century. See Kamata, "Oken to be-min sei," pp. 249-52. See also
Saitatna-ken kyoiku iinkai, Saitama Inariyama kofun shingai met tetsu ken shuri hokokusho
(Urawa: Saitama-ken kyoiku iinkai, 1982).
54 Ueda, Okimi no seiki, pp. 18,
32-33.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
134 THE YAMATO KINGDOM
Archaeological studies indicate that such communities, surrounded by
ditches and walls, were usually located on ground too high for the
cultivation of rice but near paddy fields. From earliest times, similar
concerns and interests bound members of such farming communities
into tight social groups that, from their position at the base of Japanese
society, shaped and colored subsequent social change. Farmers have
always had to deal with the common task of leveling land, building and
maintaining dikes and canals, keeping the fields flooded during the
growing season, and coping with the dangers of drought and storm as
well as the possibility of attacks by wild animals or aggressive neigh-
bors.
And it was in such farming communities that lineal control
groups (called uji or clans) gradually emerged to become major units in
the Yamato control structure.
Everyone in an early community was apparently convinced that if
rice were planted at a propitious time, if rain were plentiful during the
growing season, and if protection against wild animals and human
enemies were adequate, the community's protective deity (kami) had
been exercising its mysterious power benevolently. Because the people
believed, both then and later, that they would receive divine assistance
only if offerings were made and festivals were held at the right time
and in the right place and manner, they paid close attention (especially
at crucial times of the year) to establishing and maintaining good
relations with the community's kami. Indeed, the principal functions
of a community head (at first selected ritually) was to perform rites
that honored and ensured the receipt of benefits from the commu-
nity's kami.
Third-century Chinese accounts and archaeological finds show that
around the middle years of the earlier Yayoi period (at about the time
of Christ), agricultural communities of a given region were brought
together into petty "states" or "small state federations," the second
stage of centralization. By the first century
A.D.
some of these petty
states on the southern island of Kyushu were strong enough to send
missions to the Chinese court. Although we have no detailed informa-
tion about the unification process or how it affected the life and organi-
zation of either the nuclear community or the umbrella federation, the
following conclusions - relevant to the nature and role of the clans
that became the foundation of the Yamato control structure - can be
drawn: (i) A small state was formed by one agricultural community
that gained supremacy (probably by means of military force) over
neighboring communities; (2) a small state was headed by a king or
queen who stood above (but apparently did not replace) the heads of
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
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.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
136 THE YAMATO KINGDOM
inscription, also including the name of a clan and the
kabane
held by
its head, is on the aforementioned Inariyama sword. There we read
that the owner, whose ancestors had served King Yuryaku and his
predecessors generation after generation, was Owake no Omi. The
word uji (clan) does not appear in the inscription, but historians con-
clude that Owake was a clan name and that Omi was the kabane
bestowed on an Owake head by a Yamato king.'
6
The discovery of these two fifth-century inscriptions bearing the
names
of clans and kabane add credibility to clan references in the Nihon
shoki. Recent historical studies suggest, moreover, that all chronicle
items for the year after 400 are more accurate than had long been
supposed. Apart from the observation that post-400 reports contain
more detail about human events (suggesting that the compilers had
access to written sources later lost), comparisons with contemporary
Chinese and Korean historical accounts show that
a
number of passages
in the Nihon
shoki
were copied from or based on such foreign sources as
the Chinese dynastic histories of
Wei
and Southern
Sung
and on chroni-
cles of Paekche.57 The Nihon
shoki's
names and dates for fifth-century
kings are also in rough accord with those included Southern Sung
reports on ten tributary missions that Yamato sent to the Sung court.s
8
Thus the Nihon
shoki's
references to clans are now used with greater
confidence to determine which clan had the greatest economic and
political importance and also to chart relationships between the clans
and the Yamato king's court. From such evidence we see that the
highest kabane titles were awarded to men who headed powerful and
strategically located clans and who were bound to one Yamato king
after another by real or
fictive
family
ties.
The most prestigious
kabane
were bestowed as a hereditary right on clan leaders at the court, with
the lowest going to clan leaders in local areas. The highest two
(omi
and
mu.raji)
were granted only to the heads of powerful clans who
served the Yamato kings directly and who resided in the neighborhood
of the capital. The head of the strongest was called a great
omi
or great
muraji.
Historians who have studied the Yamato phase of Japan's cen-
tralization process have therefore given special attention to the appear-
ance of clans whose heads held the title of great omi, appointments
sometimes linked with shifts in the Yamato king line of descent.
By examining references to
kabane
during the Yuryaku reign, Inoue
Mitsusada concluded that Yuryaku greatly expanded the use of
kabane
56 Ueda, Okimi no seiki, pp. 32, 289, 372; Kamata, "Oken to be-min sei," pp. 249-52.
57 Inoue Mitsusada, Nihon shoki
(Tokyo:
Chudkoronsha, 1983), p. 138.
58 Shiraishi, "Nihon kofun bunka ron," pp. 204; Kiley, "State and Dynasty," pp. 31-40.
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