The Yamatai Puzzle: Where were Himiko’s headquarters?

The only written record of the location of Queen Himiko’s Yamatai kingdom (Yamatai koku ) is to be found in the Wei Zhi (History of Wei) Chinese accounts. But descriptions given in the Wei Zhi records befuddle historians and archaeologists trying to pinpoint Yamatai’s location today.

Model of Yamatai (conjectural), Osaka Prefectural Museum of Yayoi Culture

The early Chinese compilers of histories liked to use large round numbers … distances were given in hundreds or thousands of li   and following the vague directions in Wei Zhi to Yamatai kingdom would leave unfortunately leave one … well, in the middle of the ocean. 

To reach Yamatai, travelers leaving Tai-fang (or Inchon on the west coast of Korea as it is known today) had to sail south and then across the strait by way of the islands of Tsushima and Iki to Matsuura, Ito, Na and Fumi … all places known to be in North Kyushu.

But the trip from there to Yamatai begins to present problems because the journey would require another ten days by sea and thirty by land. That further leg of the journey appears to eliminate north Kyushu as the location of Yamatai kingdom.

Many historians would, however, like to believe that Yamatai was located in Kyushu because the large sized moated Yoshinogari settlement fits the description of Yamatai.  Such historians think that Yamatai capital was first established in Kyushu and then the Yamato clan decided to move north and east toward the area where the first government was formed in the Yamato area. Shinto legends suggest this political move. But that last leg of the required journal pokes a hole in this theory.

There is another problem with the Kyushu-Yamatai theory. It was recorded that the Chinese emperor had presented Queen Himiko’s envoy with a hundred bronze mirrors and for a long time, but few bronze mirrors had been recovered in Kyushu.

As archaeological evidence goes, large finds of bronze mirrors had always been found in the Osaka-Nara area (Kurozuka mound in Tenri city) …that is, until the discovery of 39 bronze mirrors in the Hirabaru mound in Kyushu. It would have been likely that some, if not all, of the Chinese emperor’s gift of the hundred bronze mirrors, would have been buried along with Queen Himiko’s tomb.

In the search of Himiko’s hundred mirrors, the 39 bronze mirrors that turned up in excavations of the Hirabaru mound site in Itoshima, Northern Kyushu is the latest and most important regional find generating great interest and research in the Yayoi-Kofun mounds.

Ito (or Itoshima as it is known today) was an important stopover point for envoys visiting China or returning to Yamatai. According to Wajinden:

“”When envoys are coming [to the queen's land] from the Taifang commandery, or going back [from Yama'ichi to Taifang] they usually stop [in Ito].”

However, as a stopover to Yamatai, it is clear that Ito was not Yamatai. After Ito, the next stop was Na (Fukuoka city).

Others believe that Yamatai kingdom was more likely to be located in the Kinai area where the Yamato imperial court and government was first established a century later. But that Wei Zhi’s account of the journey to Yamatai is at odds with that view too … because the journey to Kinai is … in the wrong direction.

The search is on for Queen Himiko’s tomb mound – some candidates include the the Hashihaka, Hokenoyama and Kurozuka mounds in the Nara area.

Thus the puzzle remains unsolved today, and so too, the challenge to modern-day treasure-hunters in search of Himiko’s hundred mirrors.