#Warring states

[its-not-a-pen]

i love the hilarious eunuch ranking system by @welcometothejianghu so i decided to make one based on (mostly) REAL historical chinese enunchs!

in chronological order:

Warring States Period long story short, the PM is sleeping with the Empress Dowager, and he wants to extracate himself before her son (future Emperor Qin Shi Huang) gets old enough to find out. the PM finds her a suitable replacement, and the replacement is attached to a guy named Lao Ai. They pluck his beard and pass him off as a eunuch so he can sneak into the palace. Bing bang boom everyone's happy. This goes terribly wrong later, since Lao Ai tries to replace the emperor with his own kids and stages a failed coup. rest in pieces buddy...

it's very likely that Lao Ai was a ficticious character invented by Sima Qian, who will be appearing on this list later.

Qin Dynasty

Zhao Gao helped the first emperor of China conquer an empire, and administer it efficiently with his legal knowledge, but he also made the second emperor into a puppet, and weakened the empire for his own political gain. Max points of complexity, but you'd get more loyalty out of a coffee club punch card.

Before launching his soft coup, he decided to test the waters by bring in a deer and gaslighted the emperor by calling it a horse. the officials who were loyal to him called it a horse, and he executed the rest.

Han Dynasty Jiru, male favourite of Emperor Gaozu (Liu Bang), the peasant scoundrel who became the founder of the Han Dynasty. look, if the emperor has a harem of hundreds of women and you manage to catch his attention, you max out in style points. simple as. for most of chinese history it was fairly common for high-ranking men, especially eunuchs, to wear make up like powder and rouge, but i decided to give Jiru some women's huadia as well, cause he's a baddie.

Jiru gets a bad rap for alledgely distracting the emperor from his duties, but lets be real, history is written by civil officials who have no shortage of professional jealousy and gender/sexuality related prejudice towards eunuchs, since they were the personal attendants of royalty and could exert a lot of influence. plus Liu Bang was already pissing in the hats of confucian scholars, most of the poor work ethic is on HIM. Jiru should get credit for making him marginally less of a troglodite.

all in all he didn't try any court intrigue so extra points for loyalty and complexity. free my man >:( he's just a Han dynasty Monica Lewinsky who got slutshamed by jealous coworkers >:(

Han Dynasty

meet the father of east asian history, sima qian. half the people on this list can owe their placement here thanks to his extremely though history books "records of the grand historian"

history at this time was mostly "creative writing" and sima qian attempted to give the practise more academic intergrety, he went out and personally interviewed people, tried to get primary sources, and got rid of most of the more fanstastical aspects. however, he was not without his biases and some texts can be seen as allegorical/veiled insults towards the Han Dynasty, especially towards Emperor Wu. unlike most of the people on this list, sima qian was from the gentry and castated later in life as a punishment for treason. he was implicated after trying to defend a friend, and could not pay the fine to commute his sentence. the gentlemen at the time were expected to die by suicide rather than live with such ignimony, but sima qian chose to live so he could finish writing the history book his father started. the "giant conspiracy" joke explained: the chinese word for penis is a homophone for "conspiracy".

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

i literally spend at least 2 hours a week just looking at various pictures of the terracotta army. utterly entranced. look at the details in the hair. you'd never see ANY of this when they're lined up in formation, but they're there.  

theres about 8000 of these guys down there, no two faces are alike. they're works of art. they're the manifestation of a cruel despot's delusions of grandeur. a talisman against the terrible inevitability of death, both pathetic and strangely pitiful. like watching a child clinging to his blanket, begging you not to turn off the light. they were a bunch of insignificant clay statues from a side chamber that was so small and unremarkable, no one bothered to write down the location. they were modelled after real people. their only purpose was to serve qin shi huang in the afterlife, so he could reign in heaven as he did on earth. now the emperor is just a ghost and his pawns are immortal. my dad and i visited them in the dead of winter, on a weekday, just so we wouldn't have to deal with tourists like us. the place had easily 500 people--not including the ones below ground. we traveled to xian via the old "green skin" diesel train. there are faster means, like highspeed rail but dad insisted i try the authentic way, the same way he would have traveled when he was my age it was also like, a quarter of the price but im sure that had nothing to do with it! back in the 80s carriages would get so packed people had to have their luggage passed in via the windows. as we chugged along, i read my book and my dad made us cup noodles. car is just a shortened version of "carriage", the word is the same but the mechanism is different. it's the same in chinese. i think if i told someone from the warring states period i could travel from the Kingdom of Qi to Qin in just four hours with my metal carriage, i'd be laughed out of town--or accused of being a spy and sentenced to 'death by carriage.' we hopped off the train at 4am and took a different "carriage." the taxi driver joked; "basically every dynasty put their capital in xian, stick a shovel anywhere and you'll turn up some national treasure or another." i wonder what it would have felt like to be a farmer digging a well and then out pops a remarkably realistic human head. statistical analysis show the soldier's faces bear a strong similarity to people living in the region today. the taxi stopped in front of a jewellery-hawking tourist trap and refused budge an inch until we went inside. did you know the terracotta soldiers were originally multi-coloured and painfully gaudy, just like the greek marbles? they were made assembly-line style. the arms and legs were made from the same workshops that made clay plumbing pipes and roof tiles. for quality control, the artisans were required to stamp their names. the workers who built these tombs were executed shortly afterwards, because only dead men can be trusted with secrets. qin shi huang's mausoleum is unlikely to be excavated in my father's lifetime, or mine, not unless i'm willing to take a BIG ONE for the team... instead of the tomb, they built some kind of qin shi huang-themed theme park next to it. not only was it tacky as hell the entrance fee was like $50. we went to the museum and i looked at bronze tools and pottery shards for three hours. look why can't we just crack the thing open i can't be the only one here whos dying from curiosity what if we all just took turns digging

[oh-no-its-bird]

What's that? A real Naruto server in the wild??? With a focus on warring states characters and ships???? And a shrine to Kakashi??? You better click join!

Uhh what else can I say to convince you to join. We have channels for all flavors of early konoha ships (mdtb / iztb / hsmd / hsiz / hsmt / etc.) + lots of art channels to share your finished pieces, works in progress, and just cool art from others you found laying around. Plus wip channels, fic recommendation channels, channels for your naruto ocs, custom naruto emotes, etc.

Ooooo you wanna join soooooo badddd

[odaclan]

If the cuckoo doesn't sing...

This one may be a familiar story for those who are fans of Sengoku period.

Below is what is purportedly the original text of the story:

郭公を贈り参せし人あり。されども鳴かざりければ、 なかぬなら殺してしまへ時鳥　織田右府 鳴かずともなかして見せふ杜鵑　豊太閤 なかぬなら鳴まで待よ郭公　大権現様

Someone sent a cuckoo as a gift. If it doesn't sing: If it doesn't sing, kill the cuckoo - Oda Ufu If it doesn't sing, make the cuckoo sing - Hōtaikō If it doesn't sing, wait until the cuckoo sings - Daigongen-sama

It originated from the Kasshi Yawa 甲子夜話, a text written in the Edo period by Matsuura Keizan 松浦静山, whose real name was Matsuura Kiyoshi 松浦清 (1760-1841). It's a text that included various subjects, from contemporary incidents of Matsuura's lifetime, to legends and folktales.

There are various interpretations that could be made, since those lines are very simple. For example, while the standard reading for the Hideyoshi line is to associate it with diplomacy, some has interpreted it as a tyrannical force, making people obey by threat.

Regardless of what the original author intended those lines to mean, though, this was written in the Edo period. It may have very well been passed down through hearsay to boot. It only gives us an image of the perception that people of the Edo period have of them, and not an actual proper description.

Per the customs of the time, the three unifiers were not listed by their plain names, but their honorific titles. 右府 Ufu is the title designating the post of Minister of the Right, which Nobunaga did hold for a time. 太閤 Taikō is a title that is used to refer to a Kanpaku that has formally resigned, but still continues to hold influence. 豊太閤 Hōtaikō is the term used to refer to Hideyoshi specifically. 大権現 Daigongen is an abbreviation of 東照大権現 Tōshō Daigongen. When Ieyasu had died, he was deified by that name.

An interesting thing to note is that "hotototogisu" (cuckoo) is written with different kanji for each person.

Nobunaga's hototogisu is written as 時鳥. The kanji is translates to "the bird that tells time". Hototogisu are active in the early summer (around late May to June), so in olden times it was said the farmers star planting rice when the hototogisu sings.

Hideyoshi's hototogisu is written as 杜鵑. This was taken directly from the Chinese word for a cuckoo (Dù Juān in modern Chinese pinyin). It's originally referring to a different species of bird than the hototogisu cuckoo, but was adapted as such by the Japanese. It is a name connected to a legend where a Chinese king became a cuckoo after his death.

Ieyasu's hototogisu is written as 郭公, alternately pronounced as kakkou. This is the simplest one, derived from the sound of "cuckoo cuckoo" call. As with the above, this originally does not refer to hototogisu, but the Japanese adapted its usage because the bird is of similar species.

I have not seen any theories or analysis relating to why the kanji used to write them is different. Perhaps it's simply for aesthetic reasons.

[shrimptin]

[corey-45]

Ten Depictions of the Battle of Nagashino (1575)

Artists are identified in captions

[acourtofnle]

Chapter 5 of Whispers Through Time is out now 🫶🏻

[blackswaneuroparedux]

百步穿杨

- Yang Youji

Shoot an arrow through a willow leaf a hundred steps away.

This chengyu describes an excellent marksman, equivalent to calling them a “deadeye.” Records suggest that during the Warring States period (475-221 BCE), a man named Yang Youji was challenged by King Zhuang of Chu to shoot a dragonfly without killing it, which he managed by shooting an arrow through its left wing. Yang, it was said, could shoot a willow leaf from a hundred paces away without fail. Yang became famous for his martial arts skills, and this chengyu was born.

[pl9090]

Faction Train profile

As always constructive feedback is welcome.

Nature: Specially made Faction Shrine. Requires a secure spacetime location as an anchor, (usually a planned but unbuilt or later abandoned: line, station, or platform) otherwise it would be lost forever.

Use: Large scale or biodta analysuis heavy missions. Allows access to areas dominated by chi energy.

Consist 1 Russian locomotive class C 2-6-2. Livery: Completely black. 3 Faux Tsarist Pullman carriages. Livery: Black with red lining, everything than can be made black is. Decor: Brass lined walnut, heavy black out curtains, copper, slow speed air conditioning fans, inlaid bioplasmic screens. Coach 1: Kitchen and or biodata analysis laboratory. Coach 2: Lounge. Ursula's Control Center. 1st half: Navigation center, (Spacial teleprotation, transtemporal, and extra dimensional sensors). 2nd half: Stateroom, (Meeting area with a large mammoth's shoulder bone scrying table with a heavy wooden base and surface: pockmarks, knife scores, and dried blood brown stained cracks. One edge is crumbled, bubbled or boiled so that it seemed porous with the only chair being behind it). Coach 3: Brake Paurlor. Sleeper?

Locations & Routes Used The Necropolis Line, London. British Museum Tube Station, London. City Hall Station, Manhattan.

Misc Drives like a normal locomotive, (some compemnents have timetravely names eg: Temporal shafts). High levels of Chi energy can break an anchorage. Equipped with shields, (ie: Forcefields). Forced movement risks, "losing" it. Loosing contact with the Eleven Day Empire imobilises the train and requires it to go into lockdown to be retrieved. Can be, "grounded" by well defined temporal barriers or the ritual of mass murders in the surrounding area, (eg: The Boxer Rebellion). Attracts both railway workers and others despite it's phantom status. An important Military Wing asset. Has emergency sealing systems. Scanner capbilities: Biodata, teleportation, trans-temporal migration, and no extra-dimensional glitches. Has biodata autospy facilities and analysts. Likely .U.K. signal system headcode: 5F00.

Other ‘We’ve got enough power, full steam,’ he reported. ‘But the pistons can’t push the flywheels. There’s too much resistance.’ His gold-flecked fingers tapped on the screen until a web of fine structured lines overlaid the organic flux of the timestream, as if a spider had been particularly sober. He traced a line. ‘It’s these that are the problem. Never felt such well-defined barriers. Spatially, we’re good to go. Temporally? We’re screwed. Every angle, every slip or slide into other angles, is covered. This is tight.’

[i-am-aprl]

Palestinian activists get their message across on Londons iconic Tower Bridge landmark- one of the cities most historic buildings. We need a ceasefire now.

[angstandhappiness]

NICE

chinese hanfu in style of warring states period by 南山韵味

[its-not-a-pen]

assorted art for my Qin Dynasty stories

i noticed that i tend to gloss over physical appearances when im writing characters lmao. here's what these guys look like, for those curious.

1. bargain bin prince

#1 the merchant lu buwei dressing above his station in black linen. #2 ying yiren arriving in zhao as a political hostage. his clothes reflect his status as a disposable middle-ranked prince. silk coat + black dye (both are expensive and reserved for nobility), his coat is short and has narrow sleeves, based on the terracotta sculpture of a qin offical. the hair bun is slanted right, a distinctive qin style. the right side was considered the "noble/upright" side. (look out though. for some inexplicable reason the archers all have their buns on the LEFT SIDE. and it has caused me much grief and suffering. i had to redraw SO MANY PANELS). #3 ying yiren clutching his mother's pendant, wearing a shiner, higher quality silk coat. the sleeves are wider and longer, and the hems are brocade + decorative sash + guan. I was on the fence about the guan. he is 14 years old in my depiction (15 by east asian reckoning) which is too young to be capped yet. i guess it works in the context of lu buwei being overly ambitious with his meal ticket.

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

-Bargain Bin Prince-

Lu Buwei was once a wealthy merchant who hailed from the kingdom of Wei. He made his living buying cheap and selling dear. One day, while on a business trip to Zhao, his fortunes took a change for the extraordinary.

He was taking his lunch at a wine house when he looked out into the street and saw a group of young noblemen playing a cruel and unusual game. They had bought some hot meat buns and were using them to tease a beggar—a painfully skinny youth whose clothes were so old and small his wrists stuck out a whole chi from their sleeves. First, they made him bark like a dog. Then they made him get on all fours and walk like one. After he had completed a few circuits, yipping and yapping, they finally made good on their promise and tossed a bun onto the ground. The young man pounced on it in a flash and shoved it into his mouth with both hands, nearly choking himself in his desperation to eat. 

Lu Buwei realised with surprise that the boy was wearing pure silk. The fabric had once been top-shelf stuff, though now it had become hopelessly threadbare and dirty. What he initially took to be a beggar was more than what met the eye. 

The merchant moved closer to the window. His wine had long grown cold. What began as morbid curiosity had been overtaken with eager fascination. His instincts were telling him that he was witnessing something important. 

As the group of nobles prepared to ride off, the boy scrambled to his feet and obediently took the reins of the leader's horse; it belonged to a handsome young man wearing an expensive coat fringed with brocade. As this strange group passed by the window, Lu Buwei heard the rider crack his whip and call down in a sickly sweet voice, "Do pick up the pace, A’Ren.” 

“Yes, Young Master,” the boy panted. His speech was refined, though his accent was rather hard to place.

Lu Buwei hailed a passing waiter and asked, “My good man, who was that gentleman in the fine brocade coat?” 

“Sir must be new ‘round here,” the man chuckled, “that’s the Duke’s eldest son, Young Master Zhao.” 

Heaven bless the gossipy wine sellers of the earth, Lu Buwei thought, “and who was the boy leading his horse? He doesn’t look like a servant.” 

A sneer crossed the man’s face. “Oh, him? No one important, just some minor Qin prince.”

"A prince?” 

“That’s right!” the waiter said gleefully, “you’d never guess from the looks of him. I tell you, he was real uppity when he first came here with his fancy airs and expensive clothes, but our Young Master Zhao’s been teaching him his manners. What an improvement that’s made! He’s proper regal now, ha ha!” 

“Remarkable,” Lu Buwei murmured, stroking his beard, “how very remarkable.” 

The merchant spent the next few days methodically panning the city of Handan for every nugget of information. The Qin prince was sixteen-year-old Ying Yiren, currently living as a political hostage in Zhao. Despite the deeply ironic name, which meant "extraordinary person," Yiren was only a concubine's whelp and barely worth the scraps he was fed. He had been the most expendable of his litter without being too lowly to offend his captors. That certainly explained why the duke's son could bully him so terribly. Like all currencies, princes depreciate rapidly in value when they’re over-minted, and the kings had a habit of pumping them out, two or three dozen at a time. They were not rare goods, so anything short of death or disfigurement was fair game.  

As Lu Buwei watched this pitiful, downtrodden creature, his heart became greatly moved—moved by the allure of profit, that is. He knew from experience that if he invested in wheat, he could earn back ten times as much profit. If he invested in pearls, he would make one hundredfold. Just imagine the returns he could get on a prince! 

Lu Buwei was a wealthy man with every worldly procession he could desire, but there was one thing money couldn't buy: respectability. Merchants were looked upon with the same warmth reserved for headlice and tapeworms. They were the most hated class of people, considered by many to be thieves in silk clothes, stringing their belts with other people’s hard work and contributing nothing of value themselves. 

Lu Buwei thought this was a simplistic but not unfair assessment of his work. It was true; he grew no wheat, spun no silk, and mined no jade, yet he could profit from all these things. He was self-aware enough to pity the muddy, sun-burned farmers who spat at the ground as he passed. Farmers were the lifeblood of every nation; they were born in filth and broke their backs keeping the country fed, yet he could earn ten times as much for each jin of their wheat without ever picking up a hoe. He'd envy himself, too, were their roles reversed. 

Yes, he could begrudge the farmer. But it rankled him to no end when it was the nobles who sneered at him from behind their sleeves. It got inside him, scratching and irritating like a grain of sand in an oyster. It felt unfair in a way that he could not quite explain. The only difference between himself and the average liege lord was that he had to work for his bronze, which made his money dirty, somehow—tainted by the sweat of his brow. Because he had started off as a faceless clerk in second-hand clothes, huddled together with a dozen coworkers, sharing the weak light of a single oil lamp as they copied tallies filled with goods they could never afford, this made him an unworthy pretender in their eyes. Working was both right and wrong; it seemed paradoxical. If he was up from sunrise to sundown, running around the city, balancing accounts and keeping abreast of the latest investments, it made him greedy. If he lounged about all day, reading poetry and taxing peasants at his leisure, it would make him respectable. 

Fair or not, it was heaven's mandate, and every mortal was made for their role. Lu Buwei had no interest in flipping the world upside down on a whim. He was no axe-wielding giant or muddy-handed goddess, just a simple little sparrow who wanted to line his nest with something comfortable before he got too old and grey to fly. 

Lu Buwei knocked on the doors of every associate in Handan and pooled together every favour that was owed him. This got him a meeting with Duke Zhao. The duke was not pleased to host so far beneath his station, but Lu Buwei had invited his most eloquent friends to speak for him; these were silver ingots, lacquerware and bolts of fine silk. In the presence of such esteemed company, the duke had no choice but to smile graciously and hold his nose. 

The trick to climbing the social ladder was to start near the bottom and work steadily upwards. Once Lu Buwei had Duke Zhao in his palm, he was able to secure an audience with the King. All of his eloquent friends were invited, of course. As Master Sun wrote in The Art of War, 'Make a noise in the East and attack in the West.' Lu Buwei pretended that he was here to rub shoulders with the nobility. His real goal was to get close to Ying Yiren. 

----------

[Lu Buwei befriends Ying Yiren. He convinces the Zhao King to let Ying Yiren stay at his house, ostensively as a live-in clerk. Lu Buwei tells Ying Yiren that he is extraordinary and deserves to be the next King of Qin. He plans on convincing the childless Queen to adopt Yiren as the heir apparent.]

The door opened in a haze of sandalwood incense, revealing a new set of clothes and a pink, freshly scrubbed Ying Yiren standing stiffly inside them. Lu Buwei eyed the prince critically. The extra layers gave him some much-needed bulk, but the best thing to be said about the boy at this stage was that he was not deformed or sickly. Fatten him up by five or six jin, double the amount of brocade, and he might eventually pass for stately.  

“My Prince, you look splendid!” Lu Buwei turned to the servants, “doesn’t he, girls?” 

“Oh, yes, My Prince!” they cried theatrically, “so handsome! So manly!” 

Ying Yiren turned crimson and tripped on the doorsill. “Sorry! Sorry!” It wasn’t clear who he was apologising to: the girls, Lu Buwei, or the door. 

Lu Buwei held back a sigh. He wanted someone malleable, but this was going too far! What happened to the stereotype of Qin men being war-loving brutes? How did he end up with this woolly little lamb? 

A dull gleam caught Lu Buwei’s eye. Ying Yiren was still wearing his old jade pendant, which clashed terribly with the new black silks. It was the same one he had fought for so fiercely two months ago in front of the king and his court. It had been a rare moment of genuine courage, and Lu Buwei would be lying if he said he wasn’t curious to see the trinket that inspired such an outburst. 

“Was this the pendant that Young Master Zhao stole from you?” 

“Oh, you remember that?” Ying Yiren looked surprised, “I…Yes. It is.”

"How could I forget, My Prince? You conducted yourself so bravely that day. You should have seen the fear in their eyes!” Lu Buwei had been petrified of losing his nest egg before it hatched. Everyone else was probably worried the prince had contracted rabies and might start biting. 

“My mother—I mean, Concubine Yu, gave this to me," Ying Yiren started twisting the red string between his fingers. “It was the last present I received before I left Qin, to grant me protection and to hasten my safe return. I don't know how she managed to afford it--"

“It must truly be a peerless item!” Lu Buwei had no stomach for this saccharine outpouring, “may I see it?"

Ying Yiren hesitated, “of course, Sir.” 

Lu Buwei held the jade to the light and pretended to admire it. It was a genuine article, though that scarcely did it any favours. It was the cheapest grade of serpentine, with dull, muddy colours. One of the edges had been broken and clumsily fixed with flour paste, doubtless by the boy's own hand. 

Ying Yiren hovered anxiously by his side. He all but snatched the pendant from Lu Buwei's hands, cradling it protectively like it was some precious heirloom. 

"It has so much character!" Lu Buwei said heartily, which was not a lie. "Much more memorable than those common, gaudy baubles." 

"Yes! It is, isn't it?" Ying Yiren pointed excitedly to the two weak veins of blue running through it, "The brown represents the earth, and these blue lines are the two great Chang and Huang Rivers! Isn’t it auspicious?”

“How extraordinary!” The only extraordinary thing here was that jade seller’s outrageous pitch, spinning such a fantasy to convince an ignorant concubine that this second-rate rock was a rare and marvellous item. 

Lu Buwei brought forth the new jade pendant. It was much larger and thicker than that shabby embarrassment; the colour was such a pure snow-white that it seemed to glow faintly. 

Ying Yiren looked ecstatic to receive such a princely gift. Then he looked torn. "I…I cannot accept this, Mister Lu." 

"A prince needs to dress according to his station." 

"I know! But I can’t just throw this away! This jade may not be grand, but it’s a piece of A’niang’s heart. She worked so hard for it!” Ying Yiren’s bottom lip started to tremble, “she was always working so hard for me. She always believed in me, even when no one else did, but I was too untalented to get Father's attention.” 

Lu Buwei put on his most indulgent smile and coaxed, "My Prince, you have a noble heart, but the best way to honour your birth mother would be to fulfil your birthright rather than holding onto these material items. She would want to see you become a great man." 

Lu Buwei held out the jade again; this time, Ying Yiren nodded minutely in acceptance. The merchant deliberately humbled himself by kneeling before the young man like a servant and personally affixed the pendant onto his belt. Ying Yiren helped him to his feet and said with wide, teary eyes, "Sir, you are truly a virtuous and loyal subject. I swear I shall never forget your generosity." 

Lu Buwei muttered some humble platitudes and pretended to be awestruck. What pleased him most was not the promise of reward. It was the sight of Ying Yiren furtively tucking his A'niang's pendant inside his shirt, wincing a little when the cold stone touched his bare skin. This action was worth more than a hundred blood pacts or promissory slips. Lu Buwei didn't want a clever prince who had visionary ideas. He didn't want an ambitious prince who could soar high on his own merits. He wanted a sentimental one, blinded by gratitude, who held every scrap of kindness close to his breast. 

notes: Blue and green were refered to by the same name "qing" 青 during this time period.

Bronze money was strung onto the belt, so i replaced the phrase “lining his pocket” with it.

This story is about 80% conjecture. The historical records said that Lu Buwei befriended Ying Yiren because he was an "extraordinary person" and it occurred to me that there could be a satirical twist to it, because Yiren literally translates to "extraordinary person."

this is my favourite quote. It just sums up poor Yiren's entire life so well.

“How extraordinary!” The only extraordinary thing here was that jade seller’s outrageous pitch, spinning such a fantasy to convince an ignorant concubine that this second-rate rock was a rare and marvellous item. 

[odinsblog]

This is unconscionable. (more)

[odaclan]

Nobunaga and the "Dairokuten Maō faith"

This was described in a tourism website, so it might not be necessarily true. That being said, the article claimed that the reason why Nobunaga called himself the "Dairokuten Maō" was because he might be someone who is a participant of the Dairokuten Maō worship/faith.

To explain this a little: I once mentioned that the Dairokuten Maō is actually worshipped in some areas. There are various possible reasons, but one possible reason is that in non-Buddhist faiths, this "demon king" is viewed as a guardian.

As a demon, the Maō tempts people away from Buddhist enlightenment by worldly possessions. Gold and riches and lustful pleasure. Therefore, if someone doesn't believe in Buddhism, it would make sense for them to think that this is actually a good thing and perceive the Maō as some kind of god of prosperity instead.

Slightly related to the above, there were also some medieval texts linking the Dairokuten Maō to Amaterasu and/or other deities. I'm not sure if this is in any way relevant to the worship of the Maō, but it might be relevant to Nobunaga's actions.

This is a narrative that supposedly came from the Taiheiki (possibly a more modernised translation):

「イザナギ・イザナミの第一の御子神が、「この国の主と成て」伊勢に鎮座したとき、第六天魔王が現れた。魔王は、この日本の国に仏法が広まると力を失うという理由から、天照大神の働きを妨害しようとした。

そこで天照大神は、魔王に「私は仏・法・僧の三宝には近づかない」と誓った。魔王は怒りを鎮め、その血で契約書を書き、天照大神に手渡した。「世界が滅び去るまで天照大神の末裔をこの国の主とする。もし、天皇の命に従わず、国を乱し、人民を苦しめるものがあれば、魔王の眷属が必ず罰を与え、死をもって報いさせよう」

［太平記］

When Izanagi and Izanami's first deity offspring "became the ruler of this land" and settled down in Ise, the Dairokuten Maō appeared. Since he would lose his power if Buddhism spread throughout the land of Japan, the Maō attempted to interfere with Amaterasu Ōmikami's actions.

Therefore Amaterasu Ōmikami swore to the Maō, "I will not come near the Three Treasures of Buddhism; the Buddha, Dharma, and the monks". The Maō's anger was appeased, and he wrote a contract in his blood which he gave to Amaterasu Ōmikami. "Until the world perishes, the descendants of Amaterasu Ōmikami shall be the rulers of this land. Supposing that anyone disobeys the Emperor's order, disturbs the country, or causes suffering to the people, the Maō's kin and house will surely punish them and repay it with death."

Some articles I've seen claim that there are also similar narratives where the ones who made the deal with the Maō were Izanagi and Izanami instead. As they were the creator-gods, this version escalates the Maō's importance even further. Though, I haven't seen any quotes of the actual text of this version yet.

The Taiheiki is a classic that I would expect the samurai lords of Nobunaga's time are familiar with. The idea that Nobunaga called himself the Dairokuten Maō based on the above Taiheiki text would lend some credence to the theories saying that Nobunaga might have been aiming to abolish the shogunate to restore power to the emperor.

As seen above, the Maō proclaims to be the emperor's protector, and also someone who safeguards peace in the nation. Even if Nobunaga doesn't particularly worship the Maō, he might have been inspired to view himself as that "Maō's kin and house" who puts to death those who disturbs the nation in service to the emperor.

Edit: It slipped my mind a little when I was originally writing this, but the argument against this would be that at the time of the Enryakuji burning, the head abbot of the temple was actually the emperor's brother. Nobunaga's attack on Enryakuji can be perceived as slight against the imperial household.

On the other hand, you could also argue that the Maō's protection only extends to the sitting emperor. Therefore, if Nobunaga was acting based on the Maō's promise written in Taiheiki, attacking Enryakuji is not against that principle.

[troythecatfish]

Using "Legalize" as a term to cover up the theft of people's homes and livelihoods is expected at this point from the NYT. The "free" press is complicit in the manufacturing of consent to not only destroy Gaza, but to also annex the West Bank. Free Palestine.

X: Assalrad