In one of Japan's oldest shrines, an ancient sword resides, which bears an inscription whose meaning is deeply contentious. It is also a very strange sword.
South of Nara, on the outskirts of the city of Tenri, an ancient temple lies at the foot of the slopes leading up to Mount Takamine:
Isonokami is one of Japan's oldest Shinto shrines (1). It can reliably be attested in the 4th century CE (2), when it became an important religious site for the Yamato rulers of central Japan, though its foundation legend claims it to date from the 7th year of the (historically suspect) Emperor Sujin - that is, 4 CE, by the official calendar.
The shrine has always been associated with iron weapons - objects of magical force in early society - and it is perhaps best known as the repository for an object with an important, controversial, role in describing the early relationship between the Japanese islands and the Korean peninsula. (3) This is the Seven-Branched Sword, Nanatsusaya no Tachi (also known, using an alternative reading of the kanji, 七支刀, as the Shichishito - the corresponding Korean name is Chilijido).
As a sword it is a most curious object, clearly never intended for use as a weapon. The tang lacks a hole for attachment to a sword-hilt, and the blade itself has six leaf-like protrusions spaced equally long its length, alternating sides; along with the point, these sub-blades give the object its name. The mild steel used isn't terribly suited to a serious weapon - this is a ceremonial or symbolic object.
A replica on display at Isonokami-jinja.
Its status as a symbolic item is confirmed by the presence of an inscription. This was rediscovered in the 1873 when conservation work was undertaken on the rusted object. There are Chinese characters on both sides, though a few are no longer legible. The inscriptions read as follows - solid blocks represent unreadable characters, whilst parentheses indicate ambiguous ones:
泰■四年十(一)月十六日丙午正陽造百錬(銕)七支刀(出)辟百兵宜供供候王■■■■ (作 or 祥)
先世以來未有此刀百濟王世(子)奇生聖音故爲倭王旨造傳示後世
It is the interpretation of these carvings (4) which is a contentious issue between Japanese and Korean historians. Whilst it is generally agreed that the inscriptions indicate that the sword was a presentation from the King of Paekche (a kingdom in the south-west of the Korean peninsula) in 369 CE (or perhaps 408 CE) to the King of Wa (the ancient Chinese name for Japan (5)) , the relationships implied are a matter of considerable argument. Japanese nationalist historians - taking as fact highly dubious claims in dynastic histories that Japan had directly controlled a region of Korea known to the Japanese as Mimana (Kaya in Korean), and had other Korean kingdoms in a tributary relationship - translate the ambiguous and partly defaced inscription as stating that the King of Paekche was in a subservient relationship to the King of Wa.
One impression of Korean state extents in the late 4th century CE. (6)
At the time of the decipherment of the inscription, Korea was a closed kingdom which cleaved to a particularly puritanical version of Neo-Confucianism, but before long it was a Japanese colony, and no Korean counterpoint to these Japanocentric interpretations was able to emerge before the end of Japanese colonial control after WW2.
Once Korean historians were able to consider the content of the inscription, rather different interpretations were presented. In these, the relationship of the King of Paekche to the King of Was becomes one of equality or even superiority.
This lexigraphical and linguistic difference of opinions isn't likely to be resolved any time soon, especially as the item concerned is essentially a religious artifact - and Japanese archeology is very wary of tangling with sensitive subjects dealing with the royal family or their dynastic history (7). The argument mirrors a similar controversy over inscriptions on an ancient monument, the Kwanggaeto stele, retrieved from northern Korea by colonial forces. But that's another post, maybe - as is the story of another ancient Japanese blade, the "Grasscutter Sword" Kusanagi no Tsurugi, one of the Imperial Regalia. If you want some idea of the stature of that item, it's as if the British Royal Family claimed still to be in possession of Excalibur...
Anyway, here's NHK's typically soporific take on the Seven Bladed Sword:
And what, you want it in a videogame? Here's Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven with an idiot talking over the top. Our sword arrives 4-5 minutes in.
Notes
(1) The distinction between a Shinto "shrine" and a Buddhist "temple" may seem obvious, given that they are different religions. However, this was not necessarily so throughout much of Japanese history, as the religions existed in a synergistic relationship which would see devotional sites for one faith within the precincts of the other. With the adoption of National Shinto as a central plank of the post-Meiji revolution ideology, however, the two were forcefully wrenched apart.
(2) CE = Common Era. It's a religion-neutral, non-Latinate recasting of AD increasinglt used in academic circles which is undoubtedly indicative of a degenerate homosexual liberal anti-Christian plot. Right on.
(3) You will notice the slightly cautious wording of that sentence. We are not talking about the modern countries of Japan and (South) Korea. These did not exist sixteen centuries ago, and treatment of ancient regional history as if it were equally about modern nation states is the province of nationalist ideologues, to be avoided with some care.
(5) Wa, of course, does not mean Japan in the modern sense. It's a Chinese word, and rather imprecise about the area it refers to, as Japan was on the very fringes of the Chinese world view at the time.
(6) The names on the map use the newer Revised Romanization method adopted by the South Korean government. In the text, however, I'm using the older, McCune-Reischauer, system because it's what I'm used to. Korean history in English isn't a sexy subject, the general textbooks often aren't that recent, and they tend to use the older method.
(7) Much of the early dynastic history is clearly fabricated, but the Imperial tombs are totally off-limits to archeology and this is a somewhat taboo subject in many circles.
EDIT: Music link removed 2/1/2013. (One of the image links is also broken, but is left as it is until I can source another.)
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