Wake no Kiyomaro — The Man Who Could Not Quite Believe

In Place of His Sister

"His name shall be Kitanamaro."

September, 769, by the old calendar. This line stood in an imperial decree that ended with the words: everyone, listen well.

His real name was Kiyomaro. The name meant something like Pure Maro. Now it was rewritten as Kitanamaro, which meant Filthy Maro. His family title was taken from him too, and he was given a new one, "Wakebe."

The same decree took the name of his sister, who was three years older. She had become a nun and called herself Hokin. The decree changed her back to her old name, Hiromushime.

The decree gave this reason. The brother and sister had made up terrible lies, and the sister, Hokin, had reported them to the empress.

But the history book that copied this decree, the Shoku Nihongi, goes on right afterward with a very different story.

The liars, it says, were not the sister and brother.

The story goes back four years.

The sister and brother belonged to the Fujino clan of Bizen (today's Okayama Prefecture). Both served the empress in the capital, and she favored them both.

In the first month of 765, by the old calendar, many officials were raised in rank for putting down the rebellion of the year before. The records for that day name the two of them. Court officials had numbered ranks, and the smaller the number, the higher the rank.

Kiyomaro, the brother, stayed at the sixth rank. He received only one honor rank, a mark of service.

His sister jumped from the seventh rank straight to the fifth. From the fifth rank up, an official was in a class of his own. The banquet that day was held for people of the fifth rank and above.

His sister was among the invited. He was not.

That was the kind of person his sister Hiromushi was.

When she was young, there was a man she had promised to marry. But when the empress she served shaved her head and became a nun, Hiromushi followed her and became a nun too. The empress came to tell her what was in her heart.

In the rebellion of the year before, 375 people who had been caught up in it were due to be put to death. Hokin argued hard against it, and the empress listened. The death sentences were reduced to exile and other punishments.

After the rebellion, hunger and sickness spread, and some people even left their children in the grass. Hokin sent people to pick them up. She adopted all 83 of the children herself.

In 768, still a nun, she was given the treatment of a person of the fourth rank.

Her brother was a military officer who guarded the palace.

Perhaps it made him proud to work behind her back, and a little hard to breathe, too.

Four years later, in 769, Kiyomaro was called to the empress's bedside. The Shoku Nihongi says the empress said:

"Last night, in a dream, a messenger of the god Hachiman came. He said the great god has something to tell me, and asked me to send the nun Hokin. You, Kiyomaro, go in her place and listen to what the god says."

The god had called his sister.

In the other history book, the Nihon Koki, the empress answers in the dream. Hokin is weak and cannot bear the long road. I will send Kiyomaro instead.

He was only a stand-in for his sister.

The place was the shrine of the god Hachiman at Usa, in Kyushu.

Not long before, an oracle from that shrine had reached the capital. If Dokyo is made emperor, it said, all under heaven will be at peace.

Dokyo was the monk the empress trusted most. He was called the Dharma King. The Nihon Koki writes that men cleared the way ahead of him when he went out, and that his carriage was made to look like the empress's.

According to the Shoku Nihongi, that oracle was fake. An official in charge of religious rites at Dazaifu, the government office in Kyushu, had wanted to please Dokyo and falsely said it was the god's teaching. Dokyo was deeply pleased to hear it.

Before Kiyomaro left, the Shoku Nihongi says, Dokyo said to him:

"I think the great god called you to announce that I will take the throne."

And Dokyo is said to have tempted him with promises of rank and office. The Nihon Koki says the promise was the rank of minister.

Someone else told him the opposite. It was Michi no Toyonaga, once Dokyo's teacher. According to the Nihon Koki, he said to Kiyomaro:

"If Dokyo ever climbs to the throne, how could I face him and become his subject? I will join two or three friends and become a Boyi of our time."

Boyi was a man of ancient China who would not serve a king he thought was wrong. He went into the mountains and died there.

Kiyomaro thought those words were deeply right, and it is said he always kept himself ready to throw his life away.

At the shrine at Usa, the oracle came.

Kiyomaro did not nod right away. He prayed to the god, and the Nihon Koki says he said:

"What the great god has just taught me is a matter of great importance to the nation. The oracle is hard to believe. Please show me a sign from the god."

The god appeared at once.

He stood about three jo tall, around nine meters. His color was like the full moon.

His soul left him, he lost himself, and he could not even look up, they say.

I was the one who asked to see it, after all.

The oracle was this, the Shoku Nihongi says.

"Since the founding of our country, lord and subject have been fixed. A subject has never been made a lord. The one who takes the throne must always be a person of the imperial line. Sweep away quickly the one who has left the right path."

The Nihon Koki says the god went on:

"Do not fear Dokyo's anger. I will surely help you."

At that moment, they say, Kiyomaro made one vow to the god. When the country was calm, he would surely tell the next emperor and carry out the god's wish. Even if it broke his body and cost his life, he would not go back on the god's word. What the god wanted was sutras and a temple. Much later, a document his sons sent to the court tells us this.

Kiyomaro went back to the capital and reported to the throne just as the god had taught.

Dokyo was furious.

Out in a Palanquin, Back on Horseback

According to the Shoku Nihongi, Dokyo took away Kiyomaro's post and sent him out as an extra assistant governor of Inaba (today's Tottori Prefecture). That was a deputy post outside the regular number.

The Nihon Koki says the empress could not bear to kill Kiyomaro, so she sent him to Inaba.

Before Kiyomaro reached Inaba, the next decree came out. It was the decree from the very beginning.

The decree began like this. A subject follows his lord, and with a pure, upright, and bright heart he helps and protects him.

Then it blamed Kiyomaro and his sister Hokin. They had made up lies, it said, and Hokin had reported them to the empress.

In the official record, the liars were the sister and the brother.

The decree also says this:

"Because I thought Kiyomaro and the others were people who served me, I gave them family titles and let them govern."

Now they are pushed out as unclean. So the title is taken back and made Wakebe, and the name is made Kitanamaro. It came near the end of the same decree that began by saying: serve with a pure heart.

The decree also writes about another nun who was cast out beside his sister. Her name was Myoki. I know that Myoki and Hiromushime are "two bodies but one heart," it says, so I take her name too.

His sister had a friend close enough that the empress wrote of them like this.

The same decree has one more odd line. I know that there were others who plotted together with Kiyomaro and the rest. But a ruler governs with mercy, so out of pity I forgive them.

Perhaps the mind of the empress who issued the decree was not all of one piece.

Kiyomaro's name was struck from the list of officials, and he was exiled to Osumi (the eastern part of today's Kagoshima Prefecture). His sister was stripped of her nun's status and sent to Bingo (the eastern part of today's Hiroshima Prefecture).

The two were sent to different provinces.

The Nihon Koki writes that Dokyo also sent men after Kiyomaro to kill him on the way. But a thunderstorm made everything dark, and they could not strike right away. In the meantime a messenger from the empress arrived, and Kiyomaro barely escaped, it says.

There were people in the capital who cared about Kiyomaro. One was an official named Fujiwara no Momokawa. Pitying Kiyomaro's loyalty, he is said to have sent on to the place of exile the tax from twenty households in the province of Bingo, which he had been receiving.

Bingo was the province where his sister had been sent.

After the story of the sister's exile, the Nihon Koki tells this story about her brother.

Kiyomaro's legs had withered, and he could not stand.

To pray to the god Hachiman, he went in a palanquin, a seat carried on men's shoulders, with his sick body. When he reached the district of Usa in Buzen, about three hundred wild boars were lined up on both sides of the road. The boars walked slowly about ten ri ahead of him, a long way in the old measure, and then ran off into the mountains. Everyone who saw it found it strange, they say.

On the very day he prayed at the shrine, Kiyomaro stood and walked for the first time.

He went there in a palanquin, and came back riding a horse at a gallop. Everyone on the road was said to be amazed and puzzled.

This story changes shape as the centuries pass.

In a book called the Mizukagami, written more than four hundred years later, Dokyo is angry and cuts the tendons of Kiyomaro's legs before exiling him. When Kiyomaro prayed at Usa, his cut shins were healed.

The oldest record does not say his legs were cut. It says they had withered, and he could not stand.

Why they withered is not known. This was a man who could not even look up at the god at Usa, and who was told not to fear. Perhaps the fear went down into his legs.

One more voice from the place of exile survives.

There is a book that collects old records of the Usa shrine, the Usa Takusenshu (1313). In it is a document dated the third month of 770 by the old calendar, said to have been written by Kiyomaro in Osumi. Whether Kiyomaro really wrote it is doubted.

According to that document, the people of the land where he was exiled were telling a story. They said the great god had spoken:

"In truth I have moved to this land of Osumi. So I wish to be made known soon."

Kiyomaro writes: these words just spoken may perhaps be true. So I dare to write what is in my heart and report it.

At the end of the document, he signs his name: Fujino no Kiyomaro.

The man the decree called Kitanamaro wrote his own name as Kiyomaro. This touches on the sign from the god that I reported earlier, he adds, so I write my real name and dare to report it.

In the eighth month of 770, by the old calendar, Empress Shotoku died. Within that month, Dokyo was moved to a temple in Shimotsuke (today's Tochigi Prefecture). On the same day, the official who had passed on the false oracle was sent out as governor of a southern island.

The next month, an order was issued to bring Kiyomaro, in Osumi, and Hiromushi, in Bingo, back to the capital. They had been in exile for about a year.

According to the Nihon Koki, at his home, great trees had grown like a forest around the graves of his ancestors.

On the day Kiyomaro was exiled, it says, those trees had been cut down by someone's hands.

The Same Shrine, Once More

Back in the capital, Kiyomaro wrote a document about the graves and gave it to the court.

Who cut the trees is not known. What came back was an edict. Four of his ancestors and Kiyomaro were named kuni no miyatsuko of Mimasaka and Bizen. A kuni no miyatsuko was an honorary title given to families that had ruled a region since ancient times.

The Nihon Koki says his old name was given back to him too. Kitanamaro became Kiyomaro again.

His sister Hiromushi was given the job of passing requests and reports on to the emperor.

In 771, the next year, Kiyomaro's rank was put back to the fifth rank, where it had been before the exile. It was the lowest step of the fifth rank.

In the ninth month of the same year, by the old calendar, a new post was decided. Extra assistant governor of Harima (the southwestern part of today's Hyogo Prefecture).

It was the same kind of post as when he was sent to Inaba two years before, a deputy outside the regular number.

In 772, news came from Shimotsuke that Dokyo had died. How Kiyomaro heard it is not recorded.

In reporting Dokyo's death, the Shoku Nihongi explains why he had not been punished. He was a man the late empress had loved, so they could not bear to bring him under the law.

The same words, "could not bear to," had saved both Kiyomaro's life and Dokyo's.

In the first month of 773, by the old calendar, Kiyomaro had become governor of Buzen.

It was the province where the Usa shrine stood.

On the second day of that first month, he sent a document to Dazaifu, the government office in Kyushu.

"For the past several years, the priests and officials of the great god Hachiman have used the oracles as an excuse and often spoken strange words. They not only disturb the country, they even deceive the court. The governors before me have not corrected this. Is this really what the work of governing a province should be?"

He asked that officials and fortune-tellers go together to the god's shrine, so that what was true and what was false could be made clear.

Dazaifu agreed, and on the fifteenth of the same month, the fortune-telling was held. The envoy from Dazaifu was an official in charge of religious rites. It was the same post as the official who had passed on the false oracle four years earlier.

The fortune-telling found that the oracle of one of the priests, Karashima no Sukuri no Yosome, was false.

The fortune-telling also checked another oracle. The great god wishes to be worshipped soon in the land of Osumi. Is that oracle true?

This one was found to be true.

It had the same content as what Kiyomaro is said to have reported from Osumi, where he had been exiled, three years earlier.

Four years earlier, at the same shrine, he was the man who said the oracle was hard to believe.

Now he stood on the side that checked oracles. He did not simply believe, and he did not throw it away. He tried to find out for himself. Even when he was exiled, even when his name was taken, perhaps that habit never changed.

His rank, though, did not move.

In 774, Kiyomaro and Hiromushi were both given the family title "Ason," a step higher. The day he received it was the same day as his sister. But Kiyomaro's rank stayed at the bottom of the fifth rank.

The vow he made at Usa could not be kept right away either. According to a document from his sons, it was in 780 that Kiyomaro told the emperor about the god's wish. The emperor was moved and wrote the edict himself, it says. Eleven years had passed since the vow.

His sister kept moving ahead. In the third month of 781, by the old calendar, she rose to the top step of the fifth rank.

Fifteen years had passed since the brother first reached the fifth rank. He had stayed on the same step all that time.

In 781, a new emperor took the throne.

In the eleventh month of that year, by the old calendar, his sister Hiromushi was raised to the fourth rank.

Two days later, her brother Kiyomaro was also given the fourth rank. From the bottom step of the fifth rank, he leapt over the three steps in between at once.

Kiyomaro was forty-nine by the old way of counting age. It was the day he stood level with the sister who had passed him sixteen years before.

Two days after his sister.

The River He Could Not Finish

In 784, the capital was moved from Heijo to Nagaoka.

Two royal women still had to be brought to the new capital: the empress consort, who had been delayed by mourning, and the Chugu, who had stayed behind in Heijo. Kiyomaro was in charge of the procession that welcomed them. The next month, he was raised one rank for his work on building the palace.

Since the year before, Kiyomaro had been governor of Settsu. It was a province that ran from the north of today's Osaka Prefecture to the southeast of Hyogo Prefecture.

In 786, he also became deputy head of the Ministry of Popular Affairs, which handled the country's rice fields and taxes. He also became the head of the officials in Settsu who redistributed the fields among the people.

That same year, a request came from the office in Settsu. The governor was Kiyomaro.

The post-station workers, who carried loads and looked after horses at the relay stations, were excused from one tax in other provinces. But the provinces around the capital had never had that tax, so there was nothing to be excused from. In the end, these workers carried a heavier load than those in other provinces. That was why they could not stop people from running away. So the request asked that the post-station workers' tax be waived.

The request was granted, and the same treatment spread to the other provinces around the capital.

In 788, he passed along a request from the people of his home, Wake District, to the court. Wake District had been renamed from Fujino District in 769, just before Kiyomaro went to Usa.

A big river lay between the district office and the people. Whenever it rained, no one could cross, and the farmers who lived west of the river often could not do their duties at the office. So they asked for a new district to be set up west of the river. More than 170 people made the request.

The request was granted, and Iwanashi District was created west of the river.

Iwanashi was the same as his clan's old family title, "Iwanashiwake no Kimi."

In the same year, 788, Kiyomaro also put a larger plan to the emperor.

"Let us dig a river on the border of Kawachi and Settsu and build a bank. We will lead the Kawachi River south from Arahaka, and open it to the western sea. Then the rich land will grow wider and wider, and we will be able to clear it for fields."

The rich land will grow wider and wider. The words he put forward were a bright outlook.

The work was given to Kiyomaro. The workers needed came to about 230,000 in all. The workers were to be given food.

The Nihon Koki writes the ending briefly.

They tried to dig the Kawachi River straight through to the western sea and get rid of the floods. The cost was very great, and in the end the work was not completed.

When it was stopped, and by whom, is not recorded. How far the digging got is not recorded either.

A river planned for the work of 230,000 people ended without ever reaching the sea.

Around the same time, the capital itself was not finished either.

The new capital at Nagaoka was still not complete after ten years, and the cost was beyond counting, the Nihon Koki writes.

So Kiyomaro, it says, privately told the emperor, and on the excuse of a hunting trip, had him look at the land of Kadono. The capital was moved there again. It later became Heian-kyo, today's Kyoto.

Nagaoka was the capital where, ten years before, Kiyomaro himself had lined up the procession to welcome the empress consort and the others.

He was a man who had carried a project that was never finished with his own hands. Perhaps he knew deep in his bones how heavy it is when the cost only keeps piling up.

The man who lost himself at Usa had another side.

He was used to office work, and he knew the past especially well. He wrote the Minbusho-rei, twenty volumes setting out the rules of the Ministry of Popular Affairs. At the Chugu's order, he put together the Washifu, a history of his clan, and the emperor was very pleased, they say.

In 793, Kiyomaro asked to give fifty-eight cho of rice fields in Noto (today's Ishikawa Prefecture), a cho being a little over a hectare, to one temple, and it was granted.

Jingan-ji, the Temple of the God's Wish. According to his sons' document, it was a temple Kiyomaro built with his own wealth to fulfill the god's wish at Usa.

Twenty-four years had passed since the vow at Usa.

The Two of Us

In the ninth month of 796, by the old calendar, two years after the capital moved to Heian-kyo, fields in Yamashiro, two cho each, were given to the sister and the brother.

The sister, Hiromushi, received hers first. Twelve days later, her brother Kiyomaro.

In the record of that time, the brother was of the third rank and the sister of the fourth. In rank, he had long since passed her. Even so, the sister came first in the order of receiving.

In 798, Kiyomaro asked to be released from his duties. The emperor refused, with warm words. Instead, he gave him twenty cho of fields to pass on to his children and grandchildren.

In the first month of 799, by the old calendar, his sister Hiromushi died. She was seventy.

The Nihon Koki records her death briefly. She was honest by nature and lacked nothing in integrity. The emperor trusted her greatly and held her in high regard. And the details, it adds, are in the story of Kiyomaro.

The sister's whole life came to be told inside her brother's biography.

According to that biography, before she died she left her brother one will.

"Do not spend effort on the memorial services every seventh day, or on the day the mourning ends. Just sit in a quiet room with two or three monks, bow to the Buddha, and repent. In later ages, let our descendants look up to the two of us as their model."

The two of us.

The one the god had called was his sister. He had gone to Usa in her place. At the very end, she put that brother and herself side by side as one.

The biography also says that the emperor spoke of her like this:

"Among those who serve at my side, praise and blame are all mixed up. But I have never heard Hokin speak of another person's faults."

The sister and the brother did not divide their property. They held it together, they say.

When they were exiled, they were sent to different provinces. When they were called back, it was by an order on the same day.

About a month after his sister's death, in the second month by the old calendar, Kiyomaro died too. He was sixty-seven. He had six sons and three daughters.

How he spent his last moments, and his last words, are not recorded.

What remains are his titles. Head of the Ministry of Popular Affairs, and head of the office building the palace of the new capital. The man who could not take a river to the sea was in the work of building a capital to the very end.

His eldest son, Hiroyo, had once been shut up in confinement after being caught up in some incident when he was young. What the incident was is not known. By the emperor's special pardon, he had returned to office.

In the twelfth month of that year, by the old calendar, Hiroyo sent one document to the emperor.

"My late father Kiyomaro always said in his daily life: I have received a generous salary but have done nothing for the public good. I have been given the title of kuni no miyatsuko but have given no kindness to the people."

His father had longed for his home, and could not forget the poor people there, pitying them.

So Hiroyo asked to use a hundred cho of the family's fields to save the hungry people of eight districts and more than thirty villages in his home province.

Time runs like a horse through a gap in a wall, and does not stop, he wrote. His father's wish was not fulfilled. That is why he was now reporting that wish.

The request was granted.

The fields in Bizen became fields for giving to the hungry from then on. The people of his home received that kindness, the Nihon Koki writes.

Later, Hiroyo turned his own house south of the university into a school called "Kobunin," and filled it with several thousand scrolls of books. The Nihon Koki also writes that in this way he carried out his father's wish.

The document that told his father's wish began like this.

My late father, Kiyomaro.

Thirty years earlier, it was the name the emperor's decree had rewritten as "Kitanamaro."