* Image is for illustrative purposes only.Soga no Umako
蘇我馬子
Minister
Description
The Great Minister Who Built the Soga Ascendancy
Soga no Umako was born around 551, the son of the great minister Soga no Iname. He became Ōomi, or great minister, in 572 (the first year of Emperor Bidatsu), and thereafter held that office across four reigns — those of Bidatsu, Yōmei, Sushun, and Suiko. Over more than half a century in office he repeatedly bound the Soga to the royal house by marriage and installed his clan at the center of national government. He died on the twentieth day of the fifth month of the thirty-fourth year of Empress Suiko (19 June 626).
Buddhism and the Teibi Conflict
Umako inherited the pro-Buddhist position of his father Iname. In 584 he obtained a Buddhist image brought from Baekje and, seeking practitioners, had three women ordained as nuns. The following year the anti-Buddhist faction destroyed temple buildings, sharpening the confrontation between the two camps. In 587, when Emperor Yōmei expressed the wish to take refuge in the Buddhist Law, Umako's support of it and Mononobe no Moriya's opposition brought matters to a break. In the seventh month of that year, Umako assembled a large force of imperial princes and powerful clans, and Moriya was shot dead and defeated. This Teibi conflict brought about the fall of the Mononobe and made Soga preeminence decisive.
The Enthronement and Assassination of Emperor Sushun
In 588, Umako put forward Prince Hatsusebe, who acceded as Emperor Sushun. In the eleventh month of 592, however, after the emperor had openly voiced his dissatisfaction with Umako, Umako had him killed by Yamato no Aya no Koma. As an instance of a subject murdering a reigning sovereign, the event is almost without parallel in Japanese history, and it shows that Soga power had by then reached a level exceeding that of the throne itself.
Joint Rule under Empress Suiko
After Sushun's death, Umako placed Princess Kashikiya on the throne as Empress Suiko, the first reigning empress in Japanese history. Thereafter he conducted the government in concert with Prince Umayado (Prince Shōtoku), who had been made crown prince, and institutions such as the Twelve Level Cap and Rank System (603) and the Seventeen Article Constitution (604) were established. In 620, together with Prince Umayado, he compiled the Tennōki, the Kokki, and a register of the omi, muraji, tomo no miyatsuko, kuni no miyatsuko, the one hundred eighty be, and the common people. This attempt to record the origins of the state in writing is regarded as the forerunner of historical compilation in Japan.
Asuka-dera and the Height of Soga Power
Asuka-dera (Hōkō-ji), begun in the first year of Emperor Sushun, was completed in 596 as the clan temple of the Soga. With a pagoda at its center flanked by three golden halls, it was the first full-scale Buddhist temple complex in Japan. For Umako, who had led the acceptance of Buddhism, Asuka-dera was at once a place of faith and a device that made his clan's authority visible. In 624 he petitioned the court for the cession of the Katsuragi district, with which his house had deep ties, but Empress Suiko refused — a record showing that the relationship between sovereign and Soga was not one of simple subordination.
The Ishibutai Tumulus and the Swords of Asuka
Umako's tomb is recorded in the Nihon Shoki as the Momohara Tomb, and it is generally identified with the Ishibutai Kofun at Shimanoshō in Asuka Village, Nara Prefecture. It is one of Japan's largest square tumuli, with an enormous horizontal stone chamber now exposed, and is thought to have been built in the first half of the seventh century. No record survives of any sword worn by Umako himself, but the swords of the Asuka period in which he lived were straight blades without curvature; among contemporary survivals, the Heishi Shōrin Ken and the Shichiseiken preserved at Shitennō-ji are the best known. The curved form characteristic of the Japanese sword appears only from the later Heian period onward, and the blades of Umako's age still belonged to the continental straight-sword tradition. His son was Emishi and his grandson Iruka; with the Isshi Incident of 645 the main Soga line was destroyed, and the power Umako had built came to an end in three generations.