CI010: Why Wei Approached the Wa Kingdom
The Worldview Hidden in the Ancient Foundations of East Asia
**All articles in the Communal Illusion series have been numbered in the title as CI001, CI002, and so on. Use these numbers when revisiting earlier pieces.
Ti Jun, the Wei envoy who landed in northern Kyushu in 240, and Zhang Zheng, who stayed in Yamato for several years beginning around 247. The oldest records of the Japanese side dating to the 240s are the observations of these two men, transmitted through the Wei military’s effective control of the Daifang Commandery on the northern Korean Peninsula to the Chinese imperial court.
What can be determined at this point is only that the Wei envoys set foot in the specific regional confederation they had long called the Wa kingdom [倭国] and met the Wa people [倭人] they called the Wa [委/倭]. But the Wa kingdom does not mean present-day Japan, and the Wa people do not mean present-day Japanese. An uncanny fusion of illusions was taking place in mid-third-century Japan, and as this series has shown, that fusion was perfectly synchronized with the movements of the Three Kingdoms period on the Chinese side.
In the history of the hegemonic struggle among the three kingdoms of Wei, Wu, and Shu, the Gongsun clan had risen to power on the Liaodong Peninsula by threading the gaps between them. They eventually came to control parts of the Lelang and Daifang commanderies on the northern Korean Peninsula and expanded their influence. The rise of the Gongsun on the Liaodong Peninsula was welcome news for Wu, which needed at all costs to advance into North China to contain Wei. Wu promptly dispatched envoys to demand that the Gongsun pledge submission to the Wu emperor. But for the Gongsun, diplomacy with the great power of Wei next door was a far more pressing concern than a distant state with no shared interests. The Gongsun executed the Wu envoys and presented their remains to Wei.
This act of vile discourtesy and betrayal toward Wu’s diplomatic overture sent immediate shockwaves from the ancient Korean Peninsula all the way to the ancient Japanese archipelago. We underestimate the historical awareness of the ancients out of our own selfish arrogance, but this region of East Asia has been connected since antiquity. The notion that each area developed its history in isolation is an impossibility.
The Gongsun’s recklessness transformed the geopolitical situation in ancient China. In 233 the Wu emperor Sun Quan had dispatched a massive fleet carrying 10,000 soldiers and a fortune in treasure to Liaodong, offering the Gongsun patriarch Gongsun Yuan the title of King of Yan and seeking to conclude a formal military alliance. For Wei, whose operations had been based primarily in North China, this was a geopolitical crisis. Until that point Wei had only needed to watch Wu to the south in the Yangtze region and Shu to the west in the Sichuan Basin. Wei controlled the northern half of the Yellow River basin including the Central Plains, the historical heartland of Chinese civilization, and held a relatively advantageous position for monitoring both Wu and Shu. But Wu’s scheme to ally with the Gongsun behind Wei’s back meant that Wei would be surrounded on virtually all sides. If a military alliance among Wu, Shu, and the Gongsun were concluded, it would be the end.
In this precarious situation, Wei was saved by the betrayal of Gongsun Yuan himself. But it was now forced to make a major shift in its strategy for unifying China.
First, on the iron principle that a man who betrays once will betray again, the Wei emperor Ming immediately appointed Gongsun Yuan as Grand General and extracted a pledge of loyalty to the Wei throne. For Gongsun Yuan a direct war with Wei was not realistic, so he allowed himself to be co-opted. But simultaneously in 238 Wei ordered its key minister Sima Yi to lead a force of tens of thousands in a military invasion of Gongsun territory. Combat began in Liaodong around June of 238. The Daifang and Lelang commanderies on the northern Korean Peninsula were swiftly seized. By August Gongsun Yuan had been executed.
Word of this upheaval across the sea in 238 reached Queen Himiko of Yamato almost immediately. Whether the political decision that followed was the product of deliberation among the multiple male kings of the various tribes who held real power within Yamato, or the result of a divine oracle delivered through Himiko’s trance, is uncertain. My own reading, based on the character of Yamato in this era, is that it was the queen’s oracle. What matters is that when the Yamato side detected the upheaval in the Three Kingdoms, what took place was not an immediate political strategy meeting to determine the future. It was a ritual in which the question was put to the gods.
When the oracle delivered its result and Himiko, as the consensus of Yamato, resolved to pledge submission to the Wei emperor, it can be said that Japanese history was set in motion in a certain sense. The queen of Yamato was discarding the possibility of submitting to the emperors of Wu or Shu and publicly declaring a position of vassalage to Wei. Realistically, submission to Shu, far removed from Yamato, was difficult to conceive. But Wu was in close proximity to the southern part of the Japanese archipelago and had maintained intense contact since the Jomon period as a deeply connected region. In the midst of all this, the gods determined that the next hegemon of China would be Wei. Receiving this divine will, Himiko immediately decided to dispatch envoys to the Wei emperor.
With the conferral of the title [親魏倭王] (Friend of Wei, Queen of the Wa) by Emperor Ming, Himiko officially entered a status resembling that of a tributary state within the Wei sphere. Wei then dispatched envoys from the Daifang Commandery on the Korean Peninsula to investigate the realities of this Wa kingdom it knew little about. This is better understood as a strategic survey to determine whether the Wa kingdom might become the next Gongsun. The Gishiwajinden is rich in what we would today call ethnographic content, but it must be grasped as one component of an intelligence operation aimed at winning the Three Kingdoms struggle.
Here a powerful question surfaces. Why did Wei need to establish an alliance with a Wa kingdom so far away?