Formation of small states and the Civil War of Wa In 57 AD, the chief of
Na-no-Kuni of Wa, which is said to have been located in
northern Kyushu (along the coast of
Hakata Bay), received a gold seal (
King of Na gold seal) from
Emperor Guangwu of Han.It is believed that this was the result of the consolidation of Japanese polities in northern Kyushu, and that the
Yamato State sent an envoy to the Eastern Han Dynasty as a representative of these groups. The
Nakoku found in the
Wajinden of the
Records of the Three Kingdoms is said to be located in the Fukuoka Plain. The
King of Na gold seal, described in the
Book of the Later Han, has been excavated from this area, and a Western Han mirror dating back to the 1st century BC has also been excavated. A royal tomb dating back to the 1st century BC has been found at the San'unnamikoji site (
Itoshima City), which is thought to have been the center of the ancient "Ito Province”. About 50 years later, in the first year of Yongchu (
107), the Japanese king
Suishō sent an envoy to the Eastern Han Dynasty and presented 160 slaves.The oldest person in Japanese history to have his name recorded in annals, Suishō was also the first person to be named King of Japan in historical records. Furthermore, the term "wakoku" also appeared for the first time. These facts suggest that it was during this period that the Wa polity was formed. The Book of the Later Han was compiled in a much later period, and although this has led some to believe that a powerful political force representing the Japanese state to some extent emerged between the end of the
1st century and the beginning of the
2nd century, there is no evidence that
Gōzoku in each of the regions of the Japanese archipelago had any influence on the development of the Japanese state. The possibility that the king of Japan was also known as the King of Japan cannot be ruled out. In any case, from this time until the end of the
7th century, the political power representing/uniting the Yamato people continued to refer to itself externally as "Wakoku". After Suishō, it is said that a male lineage succeeded to the throne of Yamato, but in the late 2nd century, a large-scale conflict broke out between the various political forces within Yamato (the
Great War of Yamato).
Wajinden and Himiko This great uprising was settled when
Himiko, who resided in Yamatai/Ibataikoku (see
Ibataikoku), was appointed queen regnant of Japan. Himiko died in the
240s, and the next king of Japan was a male, but civil war broke out again, and the rebellion ended when another female, Taeyeo/Ichibayo (see
Taiyo), became queen of Japan. In the Records of the Three Kingdoms, Book of Wei, Biography of the Eastern Barbarians, Wajinden, there are several detailed descriptions of
Emataikoku,
Tsushima Province, Ichiji Province, Suerokoku, Itsukoku,
Nakoku, and other provinces. It takes 20 days by water to reach Toumadai from Fumikuni, and 10 days by water and 1 month by land to reach the south from Toumadai to Yamataikuni. Queen
Himiko of Yamatai-koku also paid tribute to
Wei and was given the title of Wei-familial King of Wa. After Iyo, the record of tribute to the Chinese dynasty by Wakoku was cut off for a while. According to the
Kujiki, there were more than 120
Kuni-no-Miyatsu in various parts of the Japanese archipelago, forming regional states. Among them, the kings of the Yamato kingdom, which is said to have been established by a confederation by the first half of the
Kofun era in the 4th century, were known externally as "Yamato kings" or "Yamato kings," but the early Yamato kingdom was an alliance of
Regional states of various powerful families and was not a despotic kingdom or dynasty. It is thought that kings of regional states sometimes referred to themselves externally as
Wakoku Kings. From the late
4th century, tribute to the
Northern and Southern dynasties, such as the Eastern Jin Dynasty, was seen, and this tribute to the Southern Dynasty continued intermittently until the end of the
5th century. These were the
Five kings of Wa, as described in the
Book of Song, and five kings are known: San, Jin, Je, Heung, and Wu. The king of Japan was called "King of Wako" or "King of Japan" to the dynasties of the Southern Dynasty on the continent, and domestically he was called "King" or "Okimi", as the inscription on an iron sword excavated from the
Eta Funayama Kofun in
Kumamoto Prefecture reads.
From Wa to Japan State is shown in the far west. According to the
Book of Sui, Wakoku is a country located in the southeastern part of Baekje/Silla, in the land of Sansenri. The country's territory stretches five months from east to west and three months from north to south. This information is found in the 81st volume of the Suisho Wakoku historical record, specifically in the 46th Dongyi Wakoku section. In 607, a messenger of the
Mission to Sui brought a national book to Sui. In this book, instead of using the notation "Wakoku," the country is referred to as "," . This notation is simply to indicate that Wakoku is in the east, as in Buddhist scriptures of the time. As Japan developed, the word "倭" used to refer to the country became inappropriate, and there is a theory that it was changed to "Japan" for that reason. However, the notation of the national name remained Wakoku/Wa until the latter half of the 7th century. When
Baekje was destroyed in 660, the Japanese attempted to revive it, and the
Battle of Baekgang broke out in 663 between the
Tang dynasty and
Silla, but they were defeated and forced to withdraw completely from the Korean peninsula. The first time the country was divided into two regions was in the 1960s.
Emperor Tenmu, who won the Imjin War in 672, accelerated the construction of the Ritsuryo State, and in the process, he tried to prevent the Tang Dynasty from invading Japan by showing the Northern Tang Dynasty that Japan was a separate country from the Southern Tang Dynasty and Japan from the Southern Tang Dynasty. The compilation of the
Daiho Ritsūritsu, which regulated the new state system, was almost completed at the end of the 7th century, and it is said that the country name was changed from Wa (Japan) to
Japan around
701, just before the implementation of the said code. Thereafter, the central political power in the Japanese archipelago would refer to itself as Yamato. The
New Tang Book and the
Old Tang Book describe the change of the country's name at this time, saying that the name "Japan" was changed to "Japan. In both books, there is also a description that "Japan, originally a small country, annexed Japan," which is generally understood to refer to the
Imjin War in which
Emperor Tenmu destroyed the Omi Imperial Court of
Emperor Kōbun. The "K" in "K" is the first letter of the Japanese alphabet. In the
Sangokushi, a history book of the
Korean Peninsula, "Shilla honki", December of the 10th year of King Munmu (670), there is an article that reads, "Japan is renamed as the Japanese nation. The article states, "Japan was renamed as 'Japan' in the 10th year of King Munmu's reign (670), and was named after its proximity to the rising sun. In the
New Book of Tang, it is written that Me-tarishibikō was the first emperor to have contact with China. For a while afterwards in Japan, "Yamato" was sometimes used to refer to Japan, but around the middle of the
Nara period (the
Tempyō-shōhō era), "Wa" (和), which has the same pronunciation, began to be used in combination, and gradually became the predominant character. The word "Japan" was initially read as "Yamato," but eventually came to be read phonetically as "Zippon" or "Nippon," which became established around the
Heian era and has continued to the present day. == al-Wakwak ==