Killing is useful.
If you’re losing political power with no solution in sight, if you run out of options,
there’s always The Murder Option staring at you in the face at the end of the day.
In the year 764, it was staring at Fujiwara no Nakamaro’s face.
Nakamaro was losing the support of his fellow Fujiwara clansmen.
In the game of Japanese Court Monopoly, Retired Empress Koken had already bought Boardwalk
and Park Place.
He wanted to put Koken back in her place, which was six feet underground if he had his way.
And so he prepared for what we’ll call the Nakamaro Rebellion, or more like the
Nakamaro rebellion (squeeky voice).
He started bolstering his military might.
He gave his sons military positions in nearby provinces.
Unfortunately, he made the mistake of going to a fortune-teller to determine a good date
for the rebellion.
The fortune-teller leaked the plot.
Nakamaro was shocked.
If you can’t trust fortune-tellers, who CAN you trust?
You can trust me, come on, just click subscribe.
Retired Empress Koken rewarded the fortune-teller with a promotion, and rewarded Nakamaro with
a stripping of his position and his Fujiwara name.
That’s right, she took away his name.
Then she sent an army after him.
Koken ordered her troops to block the roads to the eastern provinces where Nakamaro had
military support.
What ensued was less of a rebellion and more of an episode of Wile E. Coyote and the Road
Runner, except in this episode, Wile E. Coyote caught the Road Runner and ripped its throat
off.
Meep meep...arrkkk!
Nakamaro’s army fled north, Koken’s Coyote army hot on his tail.
He ran around for a while getting beat up until he ran into an enemy spear.
He and his family were killed and his allies exiled.
They returned his head triumphantly to the capital.
The whole thing took about a week.
Yeah Nakamaro didn’t do so well.
The main reason was that his clansmen kind of looked the other way, many of the Fujiwara
already saw where the wind was blowing and didn’t want to back the loser.
With Nakamaro out of the way, Koken had the court in her palm.
So why was Koken so against Nakamaro controlling the court?
They used to be on good terms.
Well, her ambitions seemed to have blossomed around the time she met a Buddhist priest
named Dokyo.
Koken was struck with some illness and Dokyo used his magical, totally real Buddhist powers
to cure her.
They became close friends, really close friends.
Historians don’t know for sure what their relationship was about, were they just really
close or were they lovers?
But there’s actually a document which claims that Koken and Dokyo shared the same pillow.
So unless they alternated pillow privileges, I’m leaning towards a lovey-dovey, pokey-pokey
relationship.
Dokyo seemingly came from nowhere.
His quick rise was entirely because of Empress Koken.
She kept promoting him up the ranks until he reached near the top of the political pyramid.
Koken was not afraid of bold moves.
She issued an edict accusing the current emperor, Emperor Junnin, of conspiring with the rebel
Nakamaro, and stripped him of his position as emperor.
She banished poor ex-emperor Junnin to the island of Awaji.
Apparently, he was living in terrible conditions.
He tried to escape, was captured, and killed.
I don’t know what to think about Junnin here, should I feel bad for him or exasperated
that he didn’t seem to show any fighting spirit.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Koken took the throne a second time using the name of Empress Shotoku.
She claimed that her dead father, Emperor Shomu, gave her the authority to choose and
remove her successor.
And only those obedient to her can qualify.
This claim both justified removing Junnin and left open the possibility of making Dokyo
her successor.
Remember, Dokyo did not have royal blood.
He was not part of the Imperial Family.
Putting him on the throne would have ended the Imperial line and started a new line originating
from Dokyo.
Not only that, some historians believe that Dokyo wanted to establish a theocracy, with
a Buddhist priest ruling at the top.
He had ambition, unlike Junnin.
Dokyo was pretty much a nobody from Clan Who-Gives-A-Nut
before he gained the Empress’s favor.
He was devout and well-versed in Buddhism, and set in motion an attack on the legitimacy
of the Imperial Family itself.
He appointed a bunch of people from Clan Who-Gives-A-Nut
to high government offices, including his brother.
He convinced Empress Shotoku to implement a bunch of pro-Buddhist changes, including
packing the government with more Buddhist priests.
They also limited the amount of land that nobles and non-Buddhist institutions could
own, but did not apply this to Buddhist temples.
There was a real possibility that Empress Shotoku would abdicate and make Dokyo the emperor.
Dokyo started acting like he was already emperor.
He wore the same clothing that an emperor would wear, ate the same food, and even his
palanquin was like that of an emperor.
It seemed like he had immense power, but the truth was his power hung by a thread to Empress
Shotoku.
And we’ll see the consequences of that soon.
All of Dokyo’s preparation culminated in an event commonly called the Dokyo Incident.
One day, the chief priest of the Usa Hachiman Shrine announced some important news.
Hachiman, the famous kami of war worshipped at the shrine, issued a message:
If Dokyo is made emperor, it will bring peace to the country.
What a lucky break for Dokyo, he was ecstatic.
See, the thing with oracles is that they’re subjective, and messages from the gods are
basically messages from the priest interpreting the message.
This could have been the chief priest of the shrine wanting to get on Dokyo’s good side,
or it could have a plan by Dokyo.
This seemingly trivial message was a bombshell.
It was nothing less than an attempted coup of the Imperial House by an lesser clan.
Empress Shotoku could’ve easily said,
“Well, I guess I gotta put him on the throne.”
She already wanted to anyways.
The We Hate Dokyo side of the court was livid, especially the Fujiwara clan.
Empress Shotoku sent an official to the Usa Hachiman Shrine to confirm the message, a
move to perhaps appease the Fujiwara.
But this time, the official got a different message:
No person should ascend the throne
who has not been born in the imperial line.
Oops.
Now it could be that the chief priest saw the anti-Dokyo outrage and thought maybe Dokyo
was not a good investment after all.
The fact that Empress Shotoku did not abdicate shows us that the opposition was strong.
Dokyo’s fall was faster than his rise.
Empress Shotoku suddenly died in 770.
The Fujiwara response was swift.
They stripped him of his rank and exiled him.
Without his dear empress, Dokyo had about 0 followers.
Dokyo lived the rest of his life in obscurity, ending in a funeral fit for a peasant.
Thus ended the Dokyo Incident.
Some historians think that the threat to the Imperial line from this event made the Japanese
court afraid of female emperors.
There would not be another female ruler in Japan for another thousand years.
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