Emperor Jimmu

Jimmu
Emperor of Japan
Reign	660 BC – 585 BC (traditional)
Successor	Suizei
Born	legendary unknown
Died	legendary Japan
Burial	Unebi-yama no ushitora no sumi no misasagi (畝傍山東北陵) (Kashihara, Nara)
Spouse	Ahiratsu-hime Himetataraisuzu-hime
Issue	Tagishimimi-no-mikoto Hikoyai-no-mikoto Kamuyaimimi-no-mikoto Emperor Suizei
Father	Ugayafukiaezu
Mother	Tamayori-bime

Emperor Jimmu (神武天皇, Jinmu-tennō) was the first Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession. He is also known as Kan'yamato Iware-biko no Sumeramikoto (神日本磐余彦天皇) and personally as Wakamikenu no Mikoto (若御毛沼命) or Sano no Mikoto (狹野尊).

The Imperial house of Japan traditionally based its claim to the throne on its descent from Jimmu. While his accession is traditionally dated to 660 BC, no historically firm dates can be assigned to this early emperor's life or reign, nor to the reigns of his early successors. Most modern historians dismiss this entire period as being beyond what history can know. The reign of Emperor Kimmei (509?–571 AD), the 29th emperor, is the first for which contemporary historiography is able to assign verifiable dates.

Mythical characters

Modern scholars question the existence of at least the first nine emperors. Jimmu's descendant, Emperor Sujin, is the first that many agree may have existed, in the third or fourth century. Most contemporary historians still agree that it is unlikely that any of the recorded emperors existed until about five hundred years after Suijin's reign and about a millennium after Jimmu's recorded reign. The name Jimmu-tennō was posthumously assigned by later generations.

The conventionally accepted names and dates of the early emperors were not to be confirmed as "traditional" until the reign of Emperor Kammu (737–806), the 50th sovereign of the Yamato dynasty.

Archaeologists and historians regard Jimmu as mythical or legendary. He may have been a composite figure. According to the legendary account in the Kojiki, Emperor Jimmu would have been born on 13 February 711 BC (the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar), and died, again according to legend, on 11 March 585 BC (both dates according to the lunisolar traditional Japanese calendar).

Legendary narrative

In Japanese mythology, the Age of the Gods is the period before Jimmu's accession.

According to Shinto belief, Jimmu is regarded as a direct descendant of the sun goddess, Amaterasu. Amaterasu had a son called Ame no Oshihomimi no Mikoto and through him a grandson named Ninigi-no-Mikoto. She sent her grandson to the Japanese islands where he eventually married Konohana-Sakuya-hime. Among their three sons was Hikohohodemi no Mikoto, also called Yamasachi-hiko, who married Toyotama-hime. She was the daughter of Ryūjin, the Japanese sea god. They had a single son called Hikonagisa Takeugaya Fukiaezu no Mikoto. The boy was abandoned by his parents at birth and consequently raised by Tamayori-hime, his mother's younger sister. They eventually married and had a total of four sons. The last of these sons, Kamuyamato Iwarebiko, became Emperor Jimmu.

It is said that, soon after the beginning of Jimmu's reign, a Master of Ceremonies (saishu) was appointed. This office was commonly held by a member of the Nakatomi clan after the eighth century.

Jimmu's migration

Depiction of bearded Emperor Jimmu with his emblematic long bow and an accompanying wild bird — artwork by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892).

Mythic records in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki describe how Jimmu's brothers were born in Takachiho, the southern part of Kyūshū (in modern day Miyazaki prefecture), and decided to move eastward, as they found the location inappropriate for reigning over the entire country. Jimmu's older brother, Itsuse no Mikoto, originally led the migration, and led the clan eastward through the Seto Inland Sea with the assistance of local chieftain Sao Netsuhiko. As they reached Naniwa (modern day Ōsaka), they encountered another local chieftain, Nagasunehiko (lit. "the long-legged man"), and Itsuse was killed in the ensuing battle. Jimmu realized that they had been defeated because they battled eastward against the sun, so he decided to land on the east side of Kii Peninsula and to battle westward. They reached Kumano, and, with the guidance of a three-legged crow, Yatagarasu (lit. "eight-span crow"), they moved to Yamato. There, they once again battled Nagasunehiko and were victorious.

In Yamato, Nigihayahi no Mikoto, who also claim descent from the Takamagahara gods, was protected by Nagasunehiko. However, when Nigihayahi met Jimmu, he accepted Jimmu's legitimacy. At this point, Jimmu is said to have acceded to the throne of Japan.

According to the Kojiki, Jimmu died when he was 126 years old. This emperor's posthumous name literally means "divine might" or "god-warrior". It is undisputed that this identification is Chinese in form and Buddhist in implication, which suggests that the name must have been regularized centuries after the lifetime ascribed to Jimmu. It is generally thought that Jimmu's name and character evolved into their present shape just before the time in which legends about the origins of the Yamato dynasty were chronicled in the Kojiki.

The fluidity of Jimmu before the compilation of the Kojiki and of the Nihon Shoki is demonstrated by somewhat earlier texts that place three dynasties as successors to the mythological Yamato state. According to these texts, Jimmu's dynasty was supplanted by that of Emperor Ōjin, whose dynasty was supplanted by that of Emperor Keitai. The Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki then combined these three mythical dynasties into one long and continuous genealogy.

Any possible site for Jimmu's grave is clearly identified by tradition or mythology. The emperor's kami is venerated at the Kashihara Shrine a Shinto shrine located at Kashihara in Nara prefecture, where his palace was said to have been located. This shrine is formally named Unebi-yama no ushitora no sumi no misasagi.

Commemorating Jimmu's reign

Founding Ceremony of the Hakkō ichiu Monument, with Prince Chichibu's calligraphy of Hakkō ichiu, carved on its front side.

New Year's Day in the Japanese lunisolar calendar was traditionally celebrated as the regnal day of Emperor Jimmu. In 1872, the Meiji government proclaimed 11 February 660 BC, in the Gregorian calendar the foundation day of Japan, which was then commemorated as the holiday Kigensetsu ("Era Day") until 1948. Suspended after World War II, the celebration was reinstated in 1966 as the national holiday Kenkoku Kinen no hi ("National Foundation Day").

For the Kigensetsu celebration of 1940, according to the calculation the 2,600th anniversary of Emperor Jimmu, the government constructed on the legendary site of Emperor Jimmu's palace, near Miyazaki, the Hakkō Tower. The building was named after the ancient phrase of Hakkō ichiu (literally "eight cords, one roof"), which had been attributed to Emperor Jimmu and, since 1928, has been espoused by the Imperial government as an expression of Japanese expansionism, as it envisioned to the unification of the world (the "eight corners of the world") under the Emperor's "sacred rule", a goal that was considered imperative to all Japanese subjects, as Jimmu, finding five races in Japan, had made them all as "brothers of one family." The 1940 celebrations also included a concert at the Tokyo Kabukiza for which new works were commissioned from composers in France, Hungary, England (Benjamin Britten, Sinfonia da Requiem, ultimately rejected), and Germany (Richard Strauss, Japanische Festmusik).

Emperor Jimmu became the object of national commemoration in February 1940.

This propaganda narrative was officially abandoned at the end of Pacific War when the Japanese government accepted the 1945 Potsdam Declaration. Because of the association with Hakkō ichiu, the Kigensetsu celebration of 1976 (1940) is today considered controversial.

See also

• Imperial cult
• Xu Fu
• Modern system of ranked Shinto Shrines
• The Age of the Gods
• Emishi people
• Jomon period

Notes

Japanese Imperial kamon — a stylized chrysanthemum blossom.

References

• Aston, William George. (1896). Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, Volume 1. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. OCLC 448337491
• Bix, Herbert P. (2001). Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. New York: HarperCollins. 10-ISBN 0-06-093130-2; 13-ISBN 978-0-06-093130-8
• Brown, Delmer M. and Ichirō Ishida, eds. (1979). Gukanshō: The Future and the Past. Berkeley: University of California Press. 10-ISBN 0-520-03460-0; 13-ISBN 978-0-520-03460-0; OCLC 251325323
• Brownlee, John S. (1997). Japanese Historians and the National Myths, 1600–1945: The Age of the Gods. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. ISBN 0-7748-0645-1
• Chamberlain, Basil Hall. (1920). The Kojiki. Read before the Asiatic Society of Japan on 12 April 10 May, and 21 June 1882; reprinted, May, 1919. OCLC 1882339
• Earhart, David C. (2007). Certain Victory: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe. 10-ISBN 0-7656-1776-5; 13-ISBN 978-0-7656-1776-7
• Kitagawa, Joseph Mitsuo. (1987). On Understanding Japanese Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 10-ISBN 0691073139/13-ISBN 9780691073132; 10-ISBN 0691102295/13-ISBN 9780691102290; OCLC 15630317
• Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth. (2005). Japan encyclopedia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 10-ISBN 0-674-01753-6; 13-ISBN 978-0-674-01753-5; OCLC 58053128
• Ponsonby-Fane, Richard Arthur Brabazon. (1959). The Imperial House of Japan. Kyoto: Ponsonby Memorial Society. OCLC 194887
• Titsingh, Isaac. (1834). Nihon Odai Ichiran; ou, Annales des empereurs du Japon. Paris: Royal Asiatic Society, Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland. OCLC 5850691
• Varley, H. Paul. (1980). Jinnō Shōtōki: A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns. New York: Columbia University Press. 10-ISBN 0-231-04940-4; 13-ISBN 978-0-231-04940-5; OCLC 59145842

External links

• A more detailed profile of Jimmu
• A detailed summary of Jimmu's descent legend