Horikawa (Ancient Yamataian noble)
| Horikawa | |
|---|---|
| Born | Before 1084 |
| Died | After 1084 |
Horikawa (堀河) was the courtesy name of a 10th-century Yamataian noble who lived in or around Morigawa, today part of Kobushi City. He is known for protesting against the Imperial Court of Yamatai's acceptance of hyōkana as an official form of written Yashiman. Very little other information is known about Lord Horikawa, who in 1084 sent a short letter of complaint to the Imperial Court, written almost entirely in koji. The letter never arrived at Sanjo-Kyo, as the messenger was buried in a mudslide that helped to preserve the letters he was carrying.
Horikawa's Complaint
Background
Hua characters had traditionally been used as the main writing system of the Yashiman language since before the 3rd century, spreading west from Hinomoto as koji. The written language worked by directly translating Yashiman words into the corresponding Hua characters. After the nishikana syllabary system was introduced into Yamataian society through the conquest of West Yashima, hyōkana also developed in Akitsukuni, starting with the Miko nuns of the Michi shrines and later female novelists and poets from around the 8th to 10th centuries. Hyōkana was a syllabary system based on simplified Hua cursive characters.
The new writing style faced immense resistance from the educated and elite strata of Yamataian society, who was the new syllabary as a hijacking of their privilege by the uneducated, and at worst a total subversion of the traditional Yashiman language. These groups refused to acknowledge the new syllabary, and continued to use koji for all purposes.
While no records exist of such an act except for Horikawa's message, the Imperial Court apparently issued some sort of proclamation endorsing hyōkana as an acceptable method of writing the Yashiman language some time in 1084.
The complaint message
Dissatisfied with the Imperial Court's proclamation, Horikawa wrote a letter addressed directly to the Imperial Court as a whole, written almost entirely in koji. The message read:
"I, Lord Horikawa, am very dissatisfied with the recent proclamation by the Honourable Imperial Court to accept such common scribblings known as hyōkana as acceptable text for our glorious language."
— Horikawa, (1084)
To emphasise his disdain for hyōkana, the words "common scribblings" are accompanied by furikana characters that do not correspond to the words, suggesting they were chosen at random due to Horikawa's lack of familiarity with hyōkana. The word "hyōkana" is also written in hyōkana.
Horikawa paid a foot messenger to carry the complaint letter from Morigawa to the Imperial Capital at Sanjo-Kyo, with three other individual also sending letters. From coins found at the location, it is estimated that the messenger was paid in total the equivalent of 26 En in modern Yamataian En, far more than a labourer at the time would earn in year. The distance between Morigawa and Keijo at the time was roughly a three day walk, though the messenger brought enough food for four days.
Preservation and restoration
However, a day into the messenger's journey, he somehow got caught in a clay mudslide in the Sado Valley in modern-day Musashi Province, near Akagi, or otherwise fell into the wet mud and was unable to escape, sinking deep into the mud and drowning. His body, clothings, supplies, leather bag and paper letters within had been remarkably preserved by the clay mud, which was subsequently untouched for the next 904 years. Due to the remoteness of the Sado Valley, there was little development in the area to disturb the artifacts, especially after a road was paved over the area in the 1760s.
The messenger's corpse was finally discovered by a construction crew in 1988 while National Road 3122 was being constructed. Initially thought to be a crime scene, the police were called before it was recognised as a potential historical discovery. The Imperial University of Heian was immediately notified, and the Yamatai Archaeological Research Society was also informed. Over an operation that took over 4 days, the area was combed for any further artifacts, yielding some coins that may have been what the messenger had been paid. Two of the five letters were completely illegible for years until technology became available to decipher them, while of the three legible letters, Horikawa's was the shortest and the first to be examined.
As the entire situation had become a national sensation by this point, the text of Horikawa's letter of complaint was read on live television on 18th July, 1988. Overnight, interest in linguistics and the history of Yamatai suddenly peaked. Horikawa would become what would be termed a memetic figure in Yamataian popular culture, with period dramas often placing cameos of Horikawa or Horikawa-like characters.
After three decades however, Horikawa has faded from public view and is no longer remembered by the modern generation. Efforts to find out more about the historical figure proved to be futile, and to this day the only evidence of the man's existence is his complaint letter.
In 2018, a tomb with the name Horikawa was discovered near Kobushi, carbon dating to roughly the same time frame, but it not known if it is indeed the same Horikawa who is buried within.