The Rise and Fall of Japan's Reigning Empresses

Female Tennō

*Note: Before you begin reading this, I must explain one term: tennō.  This is the Japanese title for the reigning monarch.  It's particularly significant when talking about Japanese empresses, since there have been many empresses (wives of the emperor) throughout Japanese history, but only six female tennō.  Strikingly, all six of them ruled during the Asuka-Nara period between 592 and 770.  Why did women rule so frequently during such a short time, and never again afterwards?  None of the articles or books that we read in my history class ever explained this phenomenon, so for my first paper topic I researched female tennō.  I learned a lot of fascinating things about them, and I think I even found a real answer to my question.  Here are the results!

Introduction

Recent historical debate about female tennō has often been framed by a simple question: did these women wield power in their own right, or were they merely intermediaries?  However, this line of debate is overly simplistic.  Historical evidence makes it very clear that some of these women exercised great independent authority—Empress Jitō is an obvious example—but to insist that they were therefore not intermediaries or place holders is to ignore an obvious truth: Asuka-Nara Japan was a patriarchal society in which royal status was passed down through the male line.  One individually powerful woman (or six) could not change that fact.  To fully understand why there were so many female tennō in Asuka-Nara Japan, and why they disappeared for over a thousand years afterwards, it’s important to recognize certain key points.

First, Japanese culture provided powerful precedents that gave women the authority to rule.  Second, the instability of the nascent power system and the difficulty of establishing a viable process of male succession gave women an opening to the throne as elevated neutral figures and/or intermediaries precisely because they had no permanent claim to power.  What made female rule acceptable to the patriarchal Japanese court was the promise that the monarchy would ultimately return to the patriarchal line.  If these women made changes or consolidated power, it had to be at least nominally on behalf of their male heir.  The opposition experienced by the last female tennō, Kōken-Shōtoku, and the horrible reputation that has clung to her ever since, makes a great deal of sense in this light.  Overall, the role that these women played in holding together a tenuous and fractious center of government was, ironically, integral to Japan’s eventual arrival at the stable, long term, and exclusively male power system of the Heian period.  

Goddess, Empress, Priestess

The precedents for female rule begin with the dawn of time.  The Sun Goddess Amaterasu, the source of light, rice seed, and the divine ancestor of the royal family, is described from the earliest pages of the Nihon shoki[1] (Japan’s earliest royal history, compiled in 720 A.D.). From there, female deities, empresses, and shamanic priestesses abound.  Particularly striking is the Empress Jingō.  She is described as “intelligent and shrewd, and her countenance was of such blooming beauty that the Prince her father wondered at it.”[2]  When she grew up, she “took up arms and smote” her enemies[3] and led a military expedition across the sea to “take possession of the Land of Treasure.”[4]

Empress Jingō may well be entirely fictional; but the fact that female deities and empresses were revered as part of the royal history is a clue to the Japanese mindset of the time.  Thus, in Asuka-Nara Japan, the idea of a powerful woman on the throne was not only possible, but it had been done before with great success. 

Also apparent in the Nihon shoki is a penchant for dual rule, often in male-female pairs.  Certain historical records, such as a third-century Chinese document describing the Shamaness Queen Himiko and her brother, corroborate this.[5]  The increasing militarization of Japan in the fourth and fifth centuries, as they imported iron, weapons, and horses from the continent, seems to have gradually shifted Japanese communities away from this male-female paradigm of rule.[6]  The rise of Queen Suiko and Prince Shōtoku in 592 could therefore be seen as a throwback to earlier traditions of rule.  Even Suiko’s royal title sumeramikoto (“the one who controls soothsaying”), unprecedented for a Yamato sovereign, hearkened back to the days of shamanic queens.[7]  The question is, why did this happen?

I. Suiko

Suiko came to power at a time of great instability.  All of her brothers (including her husband/half-brother Bidatsu) had already reigned and died in a very short span of time.  Problems of royal succession threw the tenuous Yamato confederacy into frequent turmoil, and foreign threats, such as the wars on the Korean peninsula and a newly reunified China, loomed ever larger.  Lastly, the long-standing domestic rivalry between the powerful Soga and Mononobe families culminated in the total massacre of the Mononobe clan in 587.  Umako, head of the Soga clan, became the most powerful man in Japan—so much so that he found it convenient to assassinate the reigning emperor and replace him with Umako’s own niece, Suiko, with Prince Shōtoku as regent.[8]

Thus Suiko found herself in the interesting position of being half royal, half Soga in an era when the Soga were usurping the monarch’s authority and Japan was in desperate need of a strong, unifying power to lead the country.  Suiko’s unique status as a woman of both bloodlines, widow of Emperor Bidatsu, and mother of Bidatsu’s son Takeda made her a central figure of both authority and consensus.  

The idea that Suiko herself was the truly divine, unassailable center of the regime, as argued by historian Joan R. Piggot, is borne out by the events that followed the end of her thirty-six-year reign.  Prince Shōtoku passed away in 622, followed by Soga Umako in 626.  However, in spite of rising tensions over who would replace Umako as head of the Soga clan, it only erupted in violence upon Suiko Tennō’s death in 628.  Perhaps these tensions came to a head at that point precisely because of the need to choose a new imperial successor—Umako’s brother and son backed different potential heirs to the throne.[9]  However, the fact that the era of peace lasted years beyond the deaths of her male counterparts suggests that Suiko herself commanded enough respect to keep the violence at bay.  She was not a pawn, but a powerful unifying figure. 

II. Kōgyoku-Saimei

The next woman to take the throne acceded to power in much the same way as Suiko did.  Kōgyoku was the widow of the deceased Emperor Jomei, mother to two potential male heirs to the throne, and she was also selected by the head of the Soga clan to become the reigning empress in 642; this time, however, the presence of a female monarch was not enough to prevent outbreaks of violence.  Soga Iruka, grandson of Umako, famously forced Prince Yamashiro (Prince Shōtoku’s son) and twenty-two members of his family to commit suicide in 643.  Two years later, Kōgyoku’s own son, Prince Naka, murdered Soga Iruka with his own hands in the Taika coup d’état.  Kōgyoku Tennō abdicated immediately afterward.[10] 

If her first reign was a failed attempt at maintaining the peace between vying factions at court, her second reign as Saimei Tennō (655-661) was that of a decidedly successful place holder for her son, Naka.  The fact that she ruled twice under such different circumstances—once under the aegis of the Soga and again at the behest of the very man who destroyed the Soga—indicates that she truly was an elevated neutral figure who could be trusted to keep the peace.  Even if it was Prince Naka who called the shots, the divine monarch provided a sense of benevolence, stability, and much-needed religious legitimacy.  Joan Piggott describes how, during a drought in 642, “Great King Kōgyoku processed to the Minabuchi river […] and prayed to heaven for rain,” after which it is said to have rained for five days.[11]  Such public displays of divine intervention undoubtedly did much to shore up public support for an increasingly demanding central government. 

Saimei Tennō’s acceptance of the throne gave her son the freedom to pursue a very active and mobile consolidation of power across the entire country.  Naka cleverly used the specter of a possible Silla-Tang invasion to enforce greater control over the tribal uji domains; he mobilized troops and reorganized domains into new “provinces and districts” under the surveillance of royal bureaucrats.[12]

By the time Prince Naka finally ascended the throne as Tenji Tennō in 668, the central government was more powerful than ever before.  Thus, Saimei Tennō’s role as a place holder and bastion of divine authority smoothed the way for her son to become Japan’s first individually powerful, well-rounded emperor--one who was not beholden to any one clan at court, and one who initiated many of the traditions and rituals that would become essential to the prestige of the monarchy.[13]

 
III. Jitō

For all of Tenji’s power, however, he was not able to impose his last will concerning succession.  His death and the resulting Jinshin War led to the meteoric rise of Japan’s most powerful female tennō yet.  Jitō was Tenji’s daughter, wife of his younger brother Tenmu, and mother of the Prince Kusakabe, whose “double-royal” lineage as a descendent of both Tenji and Tenmu would make him an ideal heir to the throne.  The Nihon shoki describes Jitō as a political and military co-ruler whose guidance and support were essential to her husband’s victory in the Jinshin War.[14]  Once he ascended the throne in 673, Tenmu bestowed the title of ōkisaki (or kōgō) on Jitō, and they ruled jointly as equals.[15]  Just before Tenmu’s death in 686, he issued an edict declaring that “all matters of the Empire, without distinction of great and small, should be referred to the Empress-consort and the Prince Imperial.”[16]

Jitō’s power became truly evident after the death of her husband.  Like many other female tennō, she ruled as an intermediary in anticipation of the enthronement of her son, Kusakabe (who was twenty-four years old but in poor health).  To that end she immediately ordered the arrest and execution for treason of her son’s only serious rival: Prince Ootsu, Tenmu’s son by Jitō’s own sister.[17]  Such ruthless tactics are clearly not those of a benevolent monarch who remains above the fray, like Suiko or Kōgyoku-Saimei—Jitō was a completely different brand of female sovereign. 

Jitō’s reign proved that women could make bold political moves and promote significant changes to the government.  Her elimination of Prince Ootsu and subsequent pardon of his supporters succeeded in pacifying hostile elements in the court.  Jitō also oversaw the completion of a new Chinese-style legal code, the Asuka no kiyomihara ritsuryo in 689,[18] and she provided a crucial new element of stability by founding the first permanent capital city in Japan.  It was an ambitious project that required enormous resources and manpower.  Jitō personally made a trip to Ise Shrine in 692 to talk with the common people and drum up support for her grand project.  She succeeded and transferred the capital to the newly completed city of Fujiwara in 694.[19]

Jitō’s son Kusakabe had died in 689, but Jitō maintained her role as an intermediary through Kusakabe’s seven-year-old son.  In Japanese society at the time there was no precedent for naming a child so young as heir apparent, so Jitō had herself formally enthroned in 690.[20]  When her grandson, Monmu, reached the age of fourteen, Jitō officially declared him heir apparent and abdicated in his favor in 697. 

However, this was not the end of Jitō’s rule.  Instead, she made herself the first daijo-tennō—acting as mentor and regent for the new emperor.  As daijo-tennō, she passed her greatest reform yet: the Taiho Code of 701, Japan’s first extensive set of penal and administrative codes which greatly strengthened the state.

Jitō’s reign was dynamic, revolutionary, and unquestionably her own.  She was also an intermediary—first, in the sense that any dynastic ruler is an intermediary, since their ultimate goal is to pass on a strong, successful kingdom to their descendants—but also in the sense that the preservation of her husband’s patrilineal dynasty was the justification she needed to keep the court on her side.  Would they have followed her if Kusakabe had died without a son?  It’s impossible to say for sure, but Tenmu and Tenji’s other sons probably would have perceived it as an opportunity to claim the throne themselves.  Jitō’s stunningly smooth transition from Empress Consort, to Empress Dowager, to Empress Regnant was aided by her position as mother and grandmother to the only young men of “double-royal” lineage.  Indeed, the very name Jitō, which was awarded to her posthumously, means “to maintain the legitimate line.”[21] 

 
IV & V. Genmei & Genshō

The most striking particularity about the next two female tennō, Genmei (707-715) and her daughter Genshō (715-724), is that they succeeded each other directly—the only known instance in Japanese history of a woman inheriting the throne from another woman.  E. Patricia Tsurimi argues that this disproves the “intermediary theory” in their case; indeed, Genmei passed on the throne to her daughter even though she had a seventeen-year-old son of royal birth!  Tsurimi asserts that Prince Obito “was certainly old enough to succeed” though he was “sickly.”[22]  After the precedent set by his father, Monmu, that would appear to be true, especially since Genmei was there to act as daijo-tennō.   However, most evidence indicates that Genmei and Genshō were still heavily dependent on upholding patrilineal succession as the source of their legitimacy. 

Although Genmei, as both a royal widow and grandmother of the heir apparent, fulfilled all the usual prerequisites for a female intermediary, Genshō’s succession was more unprecedented.  Not only did she inherit directly from her mother, but she had never been married, thus breaking the pattern of widowed empresses.  Genmei was apparently suffering from a “prolonged illness”[23] at the time, which may account for her (and the court’s) choice to enthrone a stronger, more mature person who could take on the full responsibilities of the monarchy.  The fact that Prince Obito faced certain “opposition” at court[24] probably also played a role in this decision—like certain female tennō before her, Genshō was a compromise between rival factions.  The fact that Genmei, in 707, had also taken the trouble of granting Prince Kusakabe a posthumous status equivalent to tennō by “establishing a National Memorial Day for [him],”[25] indicates the necessity of validating her authority by shoring up a very shaky line of male succession.

Most significant of all, however, was Genshō’s lifelong celibacy.  Her inheritance from her mother was partially contingent on the fact that Genshō’s line was a dead-end.  By law, royal Japanese women either married their royal brothers or cousins, or they married no one at all.[26]  Although the Fujiwara family managed to raise their non-royal sister, Kōmyō, to the rank of Empress-Consort in 729,[27] no such promotion was possible for a non-royal man since real status was passed through the male line.  Thus Empress Genshō, a competent ruler of divine royal blood, could not produce her own heir or have any children at all.  By requiring the revalidation of a family’s royal status through the male line in every generation, the Japanese system effectively closed the door on long-term female rule.  One-generation wonders such as Jitō could arise and rock the world during their lifetime, and female to female succession was possible once, but in the end it was sons who carried on the dynasty, not daughters.  

VI. Kōken-Shōtoku

This problem, and all of the other limitations on female rule, became starkly apparent during the dual reigns of Kōken-Shōtoku.  Her rise to power and her time on the throne were unprecedented in countless ways, and this is was precisely what led to the blackening of her name throughout history.    

In addition, Joan R. Piggott argues that the ongoing adoption of Chinese laws during the Asuka-Nara period came with an absorption of Chinese-Confucian values—notably, that of absolute male authority both in the state and the home.[28]  This view of gender roles gradually came to replace the ancient Japanese beliefs in female shamanic power and male-female ruling pairs.  Kōken-Shōtoku’s reign seems to have landed right on the turning point. 

She grew up in what appeared to be favorable conditions for female authority.  Genshō had abdicated to Prince Obito in 724, who, unlike his father and grandfather, managed to have a long and successful reign as Shomu Tennō (724-749).  This ushered in another long period of co-rulership since Genshō remained with him as daijo-tennō until her death in 748.  Kōken-Shōtoku thus grew up with a strong female mentor, and her father was a vocal proponent of “gender complementarity.”  Since his only son by Empress-Consort Kōmyō had died as a baby, he made their daughter the first Crown Princess in Japan’s history and actively encouraged the court to support her accession.[29]

This was problematic for several reasons—there was no male heir-apparent and the unmarried Kōken could not produce a royal heir for the same reasons that Genshō could not.  Also, her Fujiwara lineage (via her mother, Kōmyō) made her a divisive figure, since there were factions at court that strongly opposed the newly dominant Fujiwara family.[30]

The last straw came in 757 when Kōken openly violated the unwritten laws of intermediary female rule.  Shomu Daijo-tennō had finally selected a male heir for his daughter while on his deathbed, but Kōken repudiated this heir as soon as her father passed away.  This directly led to a massive coup which, although successfully thwarted by Fujiwara forces, still led to Kōken’s abdication in 758.[31] 

By rights, as far as the court was concerned, that should have been the end of her rule; but Kōken had other ideas.  Her return to power in 764 and the entirety of her second reign as Shōtoku Tennō were so shockingly unconventional that she broke the female intermediary system once and for all. 

First, she came out of retirement and forcibly ousted a perfectly good male tennō from the throne; royal women were supposed to resolve succession disputes, not start them.  Second, she maintained her status as a Buddhist nun even while on the throne and took her religious piety to levels that were considered unseemly, even for a divine monarch.  Third, she vigorously insisted that she alone had the right to designate an heir (or not).  Fourth, she elevated the low-ranking monk, Dōkyō (who had healed her while she was sick), to new and prestigious offices at court, effectively putting him in charge of half the government.[32] 

In spite of the controversy she created, Shōtoku Tennō firmly maintained her grip on power until her death in 770.  Yet all of these drastically unprecedented moves and the violent fighting between divine monarchs—unheard of since the Jinshin War of 672—were truly destabilizing to an evolving government that was only starting to establish firm control over the country.  A generation later when Kōnin Tennō encountered the usual succession problem, his ministers firmly rejected the idea of putting his daughter on the throne as an intermediary.[33]  Thus, Shōtoku’s reign from 764-770 proved to be the last nail in the coffin for female rule in Japan.  

Conclusion

Female sovereigns played an indispensable role in the formation of the Japanese nation-state.  They alleviated problems of succession by ruling as neutral figures and intermediaries, and they actively guided the court towards more stable and centralized ways of governing.  Until the reigns of Kōken-Shōtoku, however, they had always consented to play the game according to patriarchal rules.  Even the charismatic Jitō knew that her power and legacy would topple unless she put her son or grandson on the throne, so she went to great lengths to do so.  Kōken-Shōtoku, on the other hand, appears to have been an idealist who was rather brash and divisive.  Her reign, along with widely inculcated Confucian morals of male superiority and the dawn of a long era of stability, called the Heian Period (794-1185), brought an end to the era of female tennō. 

---

[1] W.G. Aston, trans. Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, Book I, (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd, 1896), accessed March 22, 2016. http://en.wikisource.org/

[2] W.G. Aston, Nihongi, Book IX, 1.

[3] Ibid, 4.

[4] Ibid, 6.

[5] Gina L. Barnes, “The Emergence of Political Rulership and the State in Early Japan,” in Japan Emerging: Premodern History to 1850, ed. Karl F. Friday (Westview Press, 1^st ed., 2012), Kindle edition. 78-80.

[6] Ibid, 83.

[7] Michiko Y. Aoki, “Jitō Tennō: The Female Sovereign,” in Heroic with Grace: Legendary Women of Japan, ed. Chieko Irie Mulhern. 1991. (New York: Routledge, 2015), accessed March 22, 2016. Google Books. 66.

[8] Joan R. Piggot, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship (Stanford University Press, 1^st ed. 1997), 88-99.

[9] Ibid, 99.

[10] Herman Ooms, “Bricolage” in Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan: The Tenmu Dynasty, 650–800 (University of Hawai'i Press, 2009), 17. 

[11] Piggott, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship, 109.

[12] Ibid, 103.

[13] Ibid, 118-119.

[14] W.G. Aston, Nihongi, Book XXX, 2. 

[15] Aoki, “Jitō Tennō,” 45.

[16] W.G. Aston, Nihongi, Book XXIX, 63.

[17] Aoki, “Jitō Tennō,” 48.

[18] E. Patricia Tsurimi, “Japan’s Early Female Emperors” in Historical Reflections/Réflections Historiques 8.1 (Spring 1981), accessed March 14, 2016. JSTOR. 44.

[19] Aoki, “Jitō Tennō,” 51-54.

[20] Ibid, 50.

[21] Ibid, 54.

[22] Tsurimi, “Japan’s Early Female Emperors” 46.

[23] Ibid, 69.

[24] Ibid, 46.

[25] Ooms, “Bricolage,” 25.

[26] Joan R. Piggott, “The Last Classical Female Sovereign: Kōken-Shōtoku Tennō” in Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan, ed. Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush, and Joan R. Piggott, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003). 54, 65. 

[27] Tsurimi, “Japan’s Early Female Emperors” 46.

[28] Piggott, “The Last Classical Female Sovereign,” 50.

[29] Ibid, 54.

[30] Ibid, 54-55.

[31] Ibid, 56-57.

[32] Ibid, 57-60.

[33] Ibid, 66.