If you just won a huge war and held more power than anyone else in the country, what would
you do?
Would you sit back and enjoy the spoils?
Would you change the country for the better?
Emperor Tenmu found himself in this position, and he chose to become a god.
Tenmu defeated his nephew, Prince Otomo, in the Jinshin Civil War.
The Jinshin War was like this YouTube channel, it was important and transformative, but it
doesn’t get enough credit.
Tenmu’s win allowed him and his successors to transform the limited Yamato court into
an Imperial Japan, paving the way for a strong central government.
Tenmu milked his victory like one milks an almond.
Does that make sense?
Who cares.
He made room for his allies in the new government by executing and exiling his nephew’s allies.
Occupying the very tippy top of the government were his consort, the future Empress Jito,
and his sons.
It became a court ruled by Tenmu’s branch of the Imperial Family.
Tenmu also brought back the Kabane titles of nobility.
Prince Shotoku had taken steps to phase out the Kabane system years before.
In the old system, there were dozens of titles, the highest being omi and muraji.
The strongest clan leaders hung out at these top two levels.
The omi and muraji titles survived Shotoku’s reforms, allowing the influential clan leaders
to stay in power.
Tenmu brought back the kabane system, but he was a devious dude, so he reformed it to
his benefit.
Tenmu reduced it to 8 ranks, but he put omi and muraji near the bottom.
The top titles went to Tenmu’s allies during the war and the clans that supported him.
You would think this would have made the omi and muraji leaders resentful, and it did.
But it would have been worse if he had removed the omi and muraji titles altogether.
Although these titles were no longer as influential, because they had been in effect for so long,
they still held prestige.
It’s like being class president.
It sounds cool, but you just end up choosing what kind of toilet paper goes in the school
restrooms.
One ply or half ply.
Tenmu’s change allowed the old elites to keep their prestigious titles, while creating
a new class of elites, friendly to him.
Tenmu attained more power than the emperors before him.
With this power, Emperor Tenmu decided to do something that was either genius or massively
egotistical, probably both.
He decided it would be fun to be a god.
If you could ask Tenmu why he did what he did, he’d probably tell you it was for the
good of Japan, and it would be hard to argue with that.
At the time, the shadow of Silla hovered over the Japanese archipelago.
Silla had taken control of the Korean Peninsula.
If they had chosen to invade, Japan, with no unified army, would have been in trouble.
From his experience in the Jinshin War, Tenmu knew what a hassle it was to go to each regional
clan chieftain to muster troops for an adequate army.
Tenmu made reforms to strengthen the central government, following in the footsteps of
previous reformers like Shotoku and Tenji.
He made military changes like creating Imperial armies around the capital and at strategic
regions, making chieftains military commanders for the court, and improving roads so troops
can move about freely.
Tenmu pushed for the governmental changes that we talked about earlier to build a unified
state that could combat foreign threats.
He used China as a model for his reforms, like his predecessors.
He also looked at the governments of the Korean kingdoms to figure out what to do and what
not to do.
To put it in simple fifth grade terms, the Paekche king didn’t listen enough to his
ministers, and the Koguryo king listened too much.
Silla’s government was in-between.
The king was strong, but so were his ministers.
The throne made decisions after ample discussion with his court.
Tenmu liked that model.
It obviously worked because Silla was victorious.
So how and why did Tenmu make himself a god?
Remember that religion and superstition permeated people’s lives back then.
Religious power led to secular power.
Tenmu made the Ise Grand Shrine the most important shrine and dictated that an Imperial princess
must always be at the Ise shrine to worship the Sun Goddess Amaterasu.
He placed the Sun Goddess above all other kami.
It was the Imperial House’s ancestral kami.
He and his successor Empress Jito commissioned the creation of the Nihon Shoki and Kojiki,
the oldest Japanese historical texts that survived to the modern day.
There was a lot of propaganda in these texts, let’s be honest.
The writers often engaged in a writing technique called, um, making sh--t up.
The claim that the Imperial house can trace its ancestry back to the Sun Goddess is found
in these works.
The texts legitimized the Japanese emperor by proclaiming that he had divine blood, making
him a divine being.
They created a whole line of emperors at the beginning to link the emperors to the Sun
Goddess.
The texts also legitimized Emperor Tenmu himself by portraying him as the good guy in the Jinshin
War.
Not saying he wasn’t a good guy, but there is only one side of the story, one very friendly
side.
After Tenmu’s death, his consort took the throne as Empress Jito.
By that time, Tenmu, Jito, and their offsprings were already being called living kami, descendants
of the Sun Goddess.
It was either Tenmu or Jito that started using the term tenno to refer to the emperor.
Tenno means heavenly king.
This is usually translated as emperor in English.
They then retroactively used tenno for all previous emperors.
The Japanese went further than China in its veneration of the emperor.
In China, the emperor had the Mandate of Heaven.
Not to be confused with the Man Date In Heaven, which is just having a good time at the most
famous gay club in London.
The Mandate did not mean the Chinese emperor was a god.
It was a divine right to rule granted to a mortal by Heaven.
The Japanese were like, “Oh yeah?
Our emperor’s not even mortal.
He is a god, a descendant of Amaterasu.”
I’d like to thank the two new patrons Tercero and Spencer Smith, welcome guys.
We also have a second Emperor patron now, Trevor Glisan.
Thank you so much Trevor, it means a lot.
It’s weird though, having two emperors doesn’t make sense.
I think they have to fight to the death now, pretty sure that’s how it works.
Good luck, love you guys.