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Updated: June 2, 2025
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.
This was called the Okura, a term still applied to the Imperial treasury, and there were thus three stores, Okura, Uchi-kura, and Imi-kura. Soga no Machi was placed in supreme charge of all three, and the power of the Soga family grew proportionately.
It has been shown above that Soga no Iname converted one of his houses into a temple to receive the Buddhist image sent by Myong in 552, and that his son, Umako, erected a temple on the east of his residence to enshrine a stone image of Miroku, in 584. But these two edifices partook largely of the nature of private worship.
This amounted to a formal denunciation of the Soga as well as a pledge on the part of the new Emperor. The Chinese method of reckoning time by year-periods was then adopted, and the year A.D. 645 became the first of the Daika era. But before proceeding to really radical innovations, two further precautions were taken.
Two years later, Shiragi also sent a Buddhist eidolon, and in 584 just sixty-two years after the coming of Shiba Tachito from Liang and thirty-two years after Soga no Iname's attempt to popularize the Indian faith two Japanese high officials returned from Korea, carrying with them a bronze image of Buddha and a stone image of Miroku.* These two images were handed over, at his request, to the o-omi, Umako, who had inherited his father's ideas about Buddhism.
He then returned to the temple at Ikaruga, which his father had built, and being presently besieged there by the Soga forces, he and the members of his family, twenty-three in all, committed suicide. This tragedy shocked even Emishi. He warned Iruka against the peril of such extreme measures.
Soga and her sister, Miss Burnside, received us with the best hospitality. Their dwelling consisted of a row of huts which were connected with each other by means of wattled passages. The huts had doors and ordinary windows. The Sogas were just on the point of starting for the seaside on their annual holiday when we joined them. Their destination was the mouth of the Kobonqaba River.
An altogether different spirit presided at the work subsequently undertaken by this same Yasumaro, when, in conjunction with other scholars, he was required to collate the historical materials obtained abundantly from various sources since the vandalism of the Soga nobles.
Necessarily these events sharply accentuated the enmity between the Soga and the Mononobe. Twenty-five years passed, however, without any attempt to restore the worship of the Buddha. Iname, the o-omi of the Soga, died; Okoshi, the o-muraji of the Mononobe, died, and they were succeeded in these high offices by their sons, Umako and Moriya, respectively.
So omnipotent was the Soga chief that his murderous envoy was not even questioned. He received open thanks from his employer and might have risen to high office had he not debauched a daughter of the o-omi. Then Umako caused him to be hung from a tree and made a target of his body, charging him with having taken the Emperor's life. "I knew only that there was an o-omi," retorted the man.
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