Emishi and Mishihase; people who used to live north to Japan
——Looking for the Roots of Ando Pirates (1)-----
In December, 543, the Koshi provincial government reported to the central government of Japan, “Some Mishihase people were staying at the seashore of Cape Minabe in northern Sado Island, living aboard a ship. They catch fishes to eat in the spring and summer. The islanders said they were foreigners, and didn’t dare to approach them. Before long, Mishihase people robbed Wumu village in eastern Sado Island, and moved on to Sunakawa Inlet. The inlet is such a bitter place that local islanders usually stay away from there. The Mishihase people drank dirty water there, and half of them died. The corpses were piled up in a cave. Local people call the place Mishihase Curve.”
Ancient Japanese people seemed to have classified northern people into Emishi and Mishihase. As they allocated Chinese characters of Sushen, an ancient half-legendary tribe in the Amur River basin in an ancient Chinese history book, for Mishihase, they might have assumed Mishihase to be from the river basin. According to Sado islanders’ account, Mishihase sounded to be fishing people, while Emishi were basically hunting people.
There might have been more intrusions by Mishihase. Abe Hirafu (?-?), the governor of Koshi Province, commanded 180 ships and attacked Mishihase in 658. After the attack, he offered the central government 2 alive bears and 70 bear hides. In 659, he attacked Mishihase and offered the central government 49 captives. In 660, the central government finally dispatched Abe Hirafu so that he should command 200 ships and attack Mishihase. He ordered Emishi people in Mutsu Province to board the ships, and got to the southern riverbank of a large river. At that time, 1,000 Emishi people in Watari-jima were encamped on the other riverbank. 2 of them proceeded and shouted out, “Many of Mishihase’s ships and soldiers coming. They are going to kill us. We’d like to cross the river and work for you.” Abe sent a ship and asked the two where the enemy was hiding their ships and how many ships they had. The two pointed at a place and said, “More than 20 ships.” Abe sent a messenger to the enemy, but they denied coming. They also refused Abe’s appeasement policies, and held the fortress in Herobe Island. They were defeated by Abe, and killed their own wives and children in the island. Abe offered the central government 50 captives.
Abe Hirafu employed either appeasement policies or hard-liner policies depending on his opponent’s moves. His appeasement policies worked for Emishi, but not for Mishihase. In 630, the Tang Dynasty had conquered Turkic people in north of China, and had directly come into contact with Mohe tribes, who were living in the Amur River basin. In the middle of the 7th century, when Abe Hirafu intruded Mishihase, the Tang Dynasty started invading Goguryeo in the northern part of Korea Peninsula. For Mishihase, whether they were a part of Mohe tribes or those with the Okhotsk culture who inhabited in northern Hokkaido, Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin Island, Tang China might have seemed to be a bigger and more attractive market.
posted by kakutaharuo | 11:04 PM
2 Comments:
Some Japanese history scholars Herobe Island to be Okushiri Island today, and others to be Sakhalin Island today. The both assume the large river to be Ishikari River today. The latter assumption, I’m afraid, overestimates Abe’s navigation ability too highly. The latter sounds reasonable. But yet why Okushiri Island? The island is located more than 150 kilometers southwest from the estuary of Ishikari River, and more than 100 kilometers north from the northernmost tip of Honshu Island. Let me propose my assumption: Abe mistook Lake Tosa at the mouth of Iwaki River to be a large river, and those Mishihase people escaped into one of sandbank islands between the Sea of Japan and Lake Tosa.
In the 7th century, Mohe tribes’ name, Mohe, was transcribed in contemporary Chinese characters. The two Chinese characters for the tribes are pronounced Mohe in modern Chinese, more specifically in the Beijing dialect.
Let’s go back, linguistically, in their history. In the 5th and 6th centuries, the tribes’ name was transcribed as Wuji, in the modern Chinese pronunciation of course. The contemporary Chinese people, more specifically those living in Changan, might have pronounced the two Chinese characters for Wuji somewhat like Mjutkjit. The both syllables had consonant stops. Japanese people have pronounced a Chinese character with a consonant stop as if it had 2 syllables, with the consonant stop as the consonant of the second syllable. Mjutkjit doesn’t sound the same as Mishihase today, but yet could the first-person-name of the tribes sound like Mjutkjit in China and like Mishihase in Japan?
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