🍫 02: Let's Become a Historical Novelist in Yamataikoku

2025年11月1日 16:55

@YomotsushikoX

(Please note: the text from here on is the work of a complete amateur who skimmed through information on the internet in his spare time and fantasized and interpreted a field about which he had no knowledge. If you feel stressed, please leave immediately. Also, This English version, in keeping with the uniformity of the universe, has been translated with the help of AI—resulting in a notably uniform and somewhat rigid tone. We apologize in advance for any stylistic inconsistencies.🤪)

One hot summer day, I was sitting in my air-conditioned room, munching on 86% cacao dark chocolate.

The sheer volume of cacao polyphenols I was consuming created this illusion of extreme health. And since it was delightfully bittersweet, my low MP (Mental Power) couldn't resist the polyphenol magic, and I was greedily stuffing my face.

I happened to use a nearby high armrest as a makeshift table for the chocolate. As I picked up the pieces, peeling off the wrappers one by one with my bare hands, a sudden, blinding revelation struck me.

Wait, didn't I read in the Wei Zhi Wajinden that the Wajin used high tables and ate with their hands? Could it be—that chocolate existed in Yamatai? Did Himiko use the sheer power of cacao polyphenols to enter a trance and wield her Shamanic powers?

Shivering with excitement at the thought of finally cracking the truth of Wa, I immediately began tapping away at my smartphone with my chocolate-covered hands, desperate to uncover the true history of Wa.

And so, at the end of my glorious online adventure, I arrived at the definitive truth about Wa (as I have chosen to understand it).

Notes:
Wa (name of Japan)
Wajin (an ancient name for the Japanese people)

The Power of Chocolate to Bewitch the Masses

💥 Was Ancient Japan an Information Society?

Unveiling the “Mythological Algorithm” Hidden in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki

A bold new theory emerges to shed light on one of ancient Japan’s greatest mysteries:
“Was Yamatai in Kyushu, or in Nara?”
Armed with archaeology, historical records, and linguistics, it interprets the establishment of the Yamato regime not as a “single monarch,” but as a coalition government where multiple factions shared roles. The myths in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki were actually a “narrative program” designed to protect the legitimacy of the Imperial House—a way to conceal this “inconvenient coalition reality.”

1. 🔍 Yamato Was a “Mobile Capital”: The Shock of the “Coalition Government Theory”

The key to the Yamataikoku debate lay in the meaning of “Yamato.” Yamato wasn’t a single place—it was a functional term meaning a “sacred political base.” “Yamato place names” scattered nationwide were linked to Shinto mountain worship (shamanism). They served as tools to confer authority through the word-spirit concept of “mountain entrance = behind the power of the gods.”

The 3rd-century Wa state was not a single nation, but a suzerainty-based confederation (a hierarchical network with the Kinai region as its leader). Yamato in Kyushu (the Yamataikoku kingdom) served as the diplomatic and military “frontline branch office,” while Yamato in the Kinai region was the “headquarters” for rituals and integration. The Wei Chronicles' focus solely on Kyushu was merely the diplomatic window—other Yamatos (like Izumo and Tohoku) provided behind-the-scenes support.

This coalition followed the natural progression of “alliance → chaos → unification,” akin to China's Zhou Dynasty or Greece's city-state alliances. From China's Yin-Zhou alliance to Qin unification, Egypt's Upper and Lower Kingdoms to Narmer's unification, Greece's city-state alliances to Alexander's Empire, Mesopotamia's Sumerian confederation to the Akkadian Empire—Wa followed the same pattern.

2. ⚙️ The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki as “Political Software”: Deconstructing the “Mythological Algorithm”

After the coalition collapsed (during the 4th-century vacuum known as the Great Disturbance of Wa), the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki were compiled to solidify the Imperial House's rule. This served as “political software guaranteeing the Emperor's legitimacy”. The compilers transformed historical facts—civil wars and political marriages—into heroic tales by fitting them into six templates.

The Story Generation Process Illustrated with Arrows:

$\text{Historical Fact (Civil War/Political Marriage)} \quad \xrightarrow{\text{Template Conversion}} \quad \text{Myth (Heroic Conquest/Divine Protection)}$

Example: Emperor Jimmu's Eastern Campaign

Historical Input: Memories of political marriages and internal strife with Kyushu clans.
Template Conversion: Applied Conquest (1) + Overseas Campaign Substitution (6).
Mythological Output: “Conquest of the East by the Heavenly Descendant,” guided by divine will" (The 660 BCE setting is a temporal manipulation; the prototype is the 3rd-century coalition unification).

This intricate “mythological algorithm” compressed historical facts through a “filter function”—re-grammaticalizing traces of coalition around the Emperor, much like modern AI generation.

3. 🚀 Summary: Ancient Japan Was a Modern “Information Society”

This theory shifts the analysis of ancient history from “location disputes” to “narratives and structures.” The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki used templates to beautify inconvenient memories of alliances, designing the Imperial family's “national identity.”

Modern SNS and media's “edited narratives” are similar, right? The people of 1,300 years ago were masters of information design—they engineered narratives like today’s AI prompt designers.
Their insight feels astonishingly modern.

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English Version of the Paper