Mysterious peoples whose origins remain unresolved by history, blending together in complex layers to form the wellspring of what we now call the Japanese. As the age approached the mid-third century, a delegation from the Kingdom of Wei arrived on the Japanese archipelago, and an enigmatic sound lingered in their ears. That sound was Wan. According to prevailing estimates, the Wei envoys set out around the year 240 from Daifang Commandery, a territory under Wei control on the mid-western coast of the Korean Peninsula, and their movements across the Japanese side are preserved in the historical record. Among the nations on the archipelago that maintained contact with Wei, the envoys were headed for a particular capital that had unified several of these nations into a single sphere. The figure who governed that sphere was a queen named Himiko.
The capital where Himiko resided was a nation called Yamatai, yet the location of this ancient seat of power, sometimes spoken of as a kingdom, remains unknown to this day. This is, in fact, quite strange. By that period, the Chinese side already possessed advanced techniques of surveying and geographical understanding, and the account in the Gishiwajinden [魏志倭人伝], though concise, describes the very route along which the envoys traveled to gain an audience with Himiko. Hearing this alone, one might assume the location of Yamatai could be settled without difficulty, and yet it has never been definitively established. Why has the question of where Yamatai stood produced such confusion?
In this article, we will trace the path toward understanding that mystery.