The was a
Japanese aristocratic kin group
(''uji'') of the
Kofun period
The is an era in the history of Japan from about 300 to 538 AD (the date of the introduction of Buddhism), following the Yayoi period. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes collectively called the Yamato period. This period is ...
, known for its military opposition to the
Soga clan. The Mononobe were opposed to the spread of
Buddhism, partly on religious grounds, claiming that the local deities would be offended by the worshiping of foreign deities, but also as the result of feelings of
conservatism and a degree of xenophobia. The
Nakatomi clan, ancestors of the
Fujiwara Fujiwara (, written: 藤原 lit. "''Wisteria'' field") is a Japanese surname. (In English conversation it is likely to be rendered as .) Notable people with the surname include:
; Families
* The Fujiwara clan and its members
** Fujiwara no Kamatari ...
, were also Shinto ritualists allied with the Mononobe in opposition to Buddhism.
The Mononobe, like many other major families of the time, were something of a corporation or guild in addition to being a proper family by blood-relation. While the only members of the clan to appear in any significant way in the historical record were statesmen, the clan as a whole was known as the Corporation of Arms or Armorers.
History
The Mononobe were said to have been descended from
Nigihayahi no Mikoto, (饒速日命), a legendary figure who is said to have ruled Yamato before the conquest of
Emperor Jimmu. His descendant Mononobe no Toochine (物部十千根), known as the founder of the clan, was given
Isonokami Shrine by
Yamatohime-no-mikoto, the daughter of
Emperor Suinin. He then began using the name Mononobe.
In the 6th century, a number of violent clashes erupted between the Mononobe and the Soga clan. According to the ''
Nihon Shoki'', one particularly important conflict occurred after the
Emperor Yōmei died after a very short reign.
Mononobe no Moriya, the head of the clan, supported one prince to succeed Yōmei, while
Soga no Umako chose another. The conflict came to a head in a battle at Kisuri (present-day Osaka) in the year 587, where the Mononobe clan were defeated and crushed at the
Battle of Shigisan. Following Moriya's death, Buddhism saw a further spread in Japan.
[Read more in the article on Mononobe no Moriya for recent findings on a possible sponsorship for Buddhism by the Mononobe.]
In 686, the Mononobe reformed as the
Isonokami clan, named thus due to their close ties with
Isonokami Shrine, a
Shinto shrine
A is a structure whose main purpose is to house ("enshrine") one or more ''kami'', the deities of the Shinto religion.
Overview
Structurally, a Shinto shrine typically comprises several buildings.
The '' honden''Also called (本殿, meani ...
which doubled as an imperial
armory.
Family Tree
Nigihayahi-no-mikoto (饒速日命), legendary figure who is said to have ruled Yamato before the conquest of
Emperor Jimmu.
┃
Umashimaji-no-mikoto (可美真手命)
┇
(5 generations missing)
┇
Mononobe no Tōchine (物部十千根), known as the founder of the clan.
┃
Mononobe no Ikui (物部胆咋)
┃
Ikoto (物部五十琴)
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
Ikofutsu (物部伊莒弗) Mukiri (麦入) Iwamochi (石持)
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┃
Me (目) Futsukuru (布都久留) Makura (真椋) Oomae (大前) Omae (小前) Ushiro (菟代)
┃
Arayama (荒山)
┃
Okoshi (尾輿)
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
Mikari (御狩)
Moriya (守屋) Nieko (贄子), his daughter married
Soga no Umako
┃
Me (目)
┃
Umaro (宇麻呂)
┃
Isonokami no Maro
was a Japanese statesman of the Asuka period and early Nara period His family name was Mononobe no Muraji, later Mononobe no Ason and Isonokami no Ason. He attained the court rank of and ''sadaijin'', and posthumously .
In 672 Maro supported ...
(石上麻呂), changed his surname and founded the Isonokami clan (石上氏)
Descendants of Mononobe no Futsukuru (物部布都久留), see above tree.
Futsukuru (布都久留)
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
Itabi (木蓮子) Ogoto (小事)
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
Masara (麻佐良) Yakahime (宅媛), consort of
Emperor Ankan
┃
Arakabi (麁鹿火)
┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
Iwayumi (石弓) Kagehime (影媛)
Notes
References
*Sansom, George (1958). ''A History of Japan to 1334''. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
See also
*
Mononobe no Arakabi
*
Mononobe no Moriya
*
Mononobe no Okoshi
*
Isonokami no Maro
was a Japanese statesman of the Asuka period and early Nara period His family name was Mononobe no Muraji, later Mononobe no Ason and Isonokami no Ason. He attained the court rank of and ''sadaijin'', and posthumously .
In 672 Maro supported ...
*''
Kujiki''
Japanese clans
Buddhism in the Asuka period
Opposition to Buddhism
{{Japan-clan-stub