Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 2, 2025
The method pursued by the sovereign was to summon such omi and muraji as were notably influential or competent, and to entrust to them the duty of discharging functions or dealing with a special situation. Among the omi and muraji, those conspicuously powerful were charged with the superintendence of several uji, and were distinguished as o-omi and o-muraji.
The o-omi, Iname, of the Soga family, advised that, as Buddhism had won worship from all the nations on the West, Japan should not be singular. But the o-muraji, Okoshi, of the Mononobe-uji, and Kamako, muraji of the Nakatomi-uji, counselled that to bow down to foreign deities would be to incur the anger of the national gods.
His principal instigator, muraji of the Nakatomi and minister of the Right, with eight other high officials, suffered the extreme penalty; Akae, omi of the Soga and minister of the Left, had to go into exile, but the rest of Kobun's followers were pardoned.
The first is that the title imiki was generally that chosen for bestowal on naturalized foreigners; the second, that a conspicuously low place in the list is given to the revered old titles, ami and muraji. This latter feature is significant. The new peerage was, in fact, designed not only to supplant, but also to discredit, the old.
*Reputed to have mustered 300,000 strong. The annals contain an instructive description of the ceremony connected with the reception of this envoy in Japan. Six weeks later they entered the capital, after a message of welcome had been delivered to them by a muraji.
Thenceforth the annals abound with references to the advent of Buddhist priests from Korea, bearing relics or images. The omi and the muraji vied with each other in erecting shrines, and in 605, we find the Empress Suiko commanding all high dignitaries of State to make 16-foot images of copper and of embroidery.
Very shortly afterwards, however, the country was visited by a pestilence, and the calamity being regarded as an expression of the Kami's resentment, the o-muraji of the Mononobe and the muraji of the Nakatomi urged the Emperor to cast out the emblems of a foreign faith. Accordingly, the statue of the Buddha was thrown into the Naniwa canal and the temple was burned to the ground.
The first mention of it occurs in A.D. 400 when Richu condemned the muraji, Hamako, to be thus branded, but whether the practice originated then or dated from an earlier period, the annals do not show. The Emperor Richu deemed that such notoriety was sufficient penalty for high treason, but Yuryaku inflicted tattooing on a man whose dog had killed one of his Majesty's fowls.
The last months of Shotoku's life were devoted to compiling, in concert with the o-omi Umako, "a history of the Emperors; a history of the country, and the original record of the omi, the muraji, the tomo no miyatsuko, the kuni no miyatsuko, the 180 be, and the free subjects." This, the first Japanese historical work, was completed in the year 620.
Nevertheless the omi and the muraji stood higher in national esteem than the kuni-no-miyatsuko or the tomo-no-miyatsuko; the o-omi and the o-muraji, still higher; and the sovereign, at the apex of all. That much deference was paid to functions. Things remained unaltered in this respect until the sixth century when the force of foreign example began to make itself felt.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking