Ankan's Glass Bowl

Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan

This episode we look at some of the physical evidence from this period. In particular, since we are talking about the sovereign known as Ankan Tenno, we will look at a glass bowl, said to have come from his tomb, which appears to have made its way all the way from Sassanid Persia to Japan between the 5th and 6th centuries CE. Along the way we'll take a brief look at the route that such an item may have taken to travel across the Eurasian continent all the way to Japan.

For more on this episode, check out https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-79

Rough Transcript:

Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 79: Ankan’s Glass Bowl.

We are currently in the early part of the 6th century. Last episode was our New Year’s wrapup, but just before that we talked about the reign of Magari no Ōye, aka Ohine, aka Ankan Tennō. According to the Chronicles, he was the eldest son of Wohodo, aka Keitai Tennō, coming to the throne in 534. For all of the various Miyake, or Royal Grannaries, that he granted, his reign only lasted about two years, coming to an unfortunate end in the 12th month of 535. The Chronicles claim that Ohine was 70 years old when he died, which would seem to indicate he was born when his father, Wohodo, was only 13 years of age. That seems rather young, but not impossibly so.

It is said that Ankan Tennō was buried on the hill of Takaya, in the area of Furuichi. And that is where my personal interest in him and his short reign might end, if not for a glass bowl that caught my eye in the Tokyo National Museum.

Specifically, it was the Heiseikan, which is where the Tokyo National Museum hosts special exhibitions, but it also hosts a regular exhibition on Japanese archaeology. In fact, if you ever get the chance, I highly recommend checking it out. I mean, let’s be honest, the Tokyo National Museum is one of my favorite places to visit when I’m in Tokyo. I think there is always something new—or at least something old that I find I’m taking a second look at.

The Japanese archaeology section of the Heiseikan covers from the earliest stone tools through the Jomon, Yayoi, Kofun, and up to about the Nara period. They have originals or replicas of many items that we’ve talked about on the podcast, including the gold seal of King Na of Wa, the Suda Hachiman mirror, and the swords from Eta Funayama and Inariyama kofun, which mention Wakatakiru no Ōkimi, generally thought to be the sovereign known as Yuuryaku Tennō. They also have one of the large iron tate, or shields, on loan from Isonokami Shrine, and lots of bronze mirrors and various types of haniwa.

Amongst this treasure trove of archaeological artifacts, one thing caught my eye from early on. It is a small, glass bowl, round in shape, impressed throughout with a series of round indentations, almost like a giant golf ball. Dark brown streaks crisscross the bowl, where it has been broken and put back together at some point in the past. According to the placard, this Juuyo Bunkazai, or Important Cultural Property, is dated to about the 6th century, was produced somewhere in West Asia, and it is said to have come from the tomb of none other than Ankan Tennō himself.

This has always intrigued me. First and foremost there is the question of provenance—while there are plenty of tombs that have been opened over the years, generally speaking the tombs of the imperial family, especially those identified as belonging to reigning sovereigns, have been off limits to most archaeological investigations. So how is it that we have artifacts identified with the tomb of Ankan Tennō, if that is the case?

The second question, which almost trumps the first, is just how did a glass bowl from west Asia make it all the way to Japan in the 6th century? Of course, Japan and northeast Asia in general were not strangers to glassmaking—glass beads have a long history both on the Korean peninsula and in the archipelago, including the molds used to make them. However, it is one thing to melt glass and pour it into molds, similar to working with cast bronze. These bowls, however, appear to be something different. They were definitely foreign, and, as we shall see, they had made quite the journey.

So let’s take a look and see if we can’t answer both of these questions, and maybe learn a little bit more about the world of 6th century Japan along the way.

To start with, let’s look at the provenance of this glass bowl. Provenance is important—there are numerous stories of famous “finds” that turned out to be fakes, or else items planted by someone who wanted to get their name out there. Archaeology—and its close cousin, paleontology—can get extremely competitive, and if you don’t believe me just look up the Bone Wars of the late 19th century. Other names that come to mind: The infamous Piltdown man, the Cardiff Giant, and someone we mentioned in one of our first episodes, Fujimura Shin’ichi, who was accused of salting digs to try to claim human habitation in Japan going back hundreds of thousands of years.

This is further complicated by the fact that, in many cases, the situation behind a given find is not necessarily well documented. There are Edo period examples of Jomon pottery, or haniwa, that were found, but whose actual origins have been lost to time. Then there are things like the seal of King Na of Wa, which is said to have been discovered by a farmer, devoid of the context that would help to otherwise clear the questions that continue to surround such an object. On top of this, there are plenty of tombs that have been worn down over the ages—where wind and water have eroded the soil, leaving only the giant stone bones, or perhaps washing burial goods into nearby fields or otherwise displacing them.

So what is the story with the tomb of Ankan Tennō, and this glass bowl?

To answer this, let’s first look at the tomb attributed to Ankan Tennō. The Nihon Shoki tells us in the 8th century that this tomb was located at Takaya, in the area of Furuichi. This claim is later repeated by the Engi Shiki in the 10th century. Theoretically, the compilers of both of these works had some idea of where this was, but in the hundreds of years since then, a lot has happened. Japan has seen numerous governments, as well as war, famine, natural disaster, and more. At one point, members of the royal household were selling off calligraphy just to pay for the upkeep of the court, and while the giant kofun no doubt continued to be prominent features for locals in the surrounding areas, the civilian and military governments of the intervening centuries had little to no budget to spare for their upkeep. Records were lost, as were many details.

Towards the end of the Edo period, and into the early Meiji, a resurgence in interest in the royal, or Imperial, family and their ancient mausoleums caused people to investigate the texts and attempt to identify mausoleums for each of the sovereigns, as well as other notable figures, in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki. Given that many of those figures are likely fictional or legendary individuals, one can see how this may be problematic. And yet, the list that eventually emerged has become the current list of kofun protected by the Imperial Household Agency as imperial mausolea.

Based on what we know, today, some of these official associations seem obviously questionable. Some of them, for instance, are not even keyhole shaped tombs—for instance, some are circular, or round tombs, where the claim is often made that the other parts of the tomb were eroded or washed away. Still others engender their own controversy, such as who, exactly, is buried in Daisen-ryō, the largest kofun, claimed to be the resting place of Ōsazaki no Mikoto, aka Nintoku Tennō. Some people, however, claim that it is actually the sovereign Woasatsuma Wakugo, aka Ingyō Tennō, who is buried there, instead. What is the truth? Well, without opening up the main tomb, who is to say, and even then it is possible that any evidence may have already been lost to the acidic soils of the archipelago, which are hardly kind to organic matter.

By the way, quick divergence, here—if you look up information on Daisen-ryō, aka Daisen Kofun, you may notice that there are drawings of a grave, including a coffin, associated with it. That might get you thinking, as I did at one point, that Daisen kofun had already been opened, but it turns out that was a grave on the slopes of the square end of the kofun, and not from the main, circular burial mound. Theoretically this may have been an important consort, or perhaps offspring or close relative of the main individual interred in the kofun, but most likely it is not for the person for whom the giant mound was actually erected. So, yes, Daisen kofun remains unopened, at least as far as we know.

As for the kofun identified for Ankan Tennō, today that is the tomb known as Furuichi Tsukiyama Kofun, aka Takaya Tsukiyama Kofun. While the connection to Ankan Tennō may be somewhat unclear, the kofun has had its own colorful history, in a way. Now most of the reports I could find, from about ’92 up to 2022, place this kofun, which is a keyhole shaped kofun, in the correct time period—about the early to mid-6th century, matching up nicely with a 534 to 535 date for the reign given to Ankan Tennō. But what is fascinating is the history around the 15th to 16th centuries. It was just after the Ounin War, in 1479, when Hatakeyama Yoshihiro decided to build a castle here, placing the honmaru, the main enclosure, around the kofun, apparently incorporating the kofun and its moats into the castle design. The castle, known as Takaya Castle, would eventually fall to Oda Nobunaga’s forces in 1575, and most of the surrounding area was burned down in the fighting, bringing the kofun’s life as a castle to an end.

Some of the old earthworks still exist, however, and excavations in the area have helped determine the shape of the old castle, though there still have not been any fulsome excavations of the mound that I have found. This makes sense as the kofun is designated as belonging to a member of the imperial lineage.

There are, however, other keyhole shaped kofun from around the early 6th century that are also found in the same area, which also could be considered royal mausolea, and would seem to fit the bill just as well as this particular tomb. In addition, there are details in the Chronicles, such as the fact that Magari no Ohine, aka Ankan Tennō, was supposedly buried with his wife and his younger sister. This is, however, contradicted by records like the 10th century Engi Shiki, where two tombs are identified, one for Ankan Tennō and one for his wife, Kasuga no Yamada, so either the Chronicles got it wrong, or there were already problems with tomb identification just two centuries later. So we still aren’t entirely sure that this is Ankan Tennō’s tomb.

But at least we know that the glass bowl came from a 6th century kingly tomb, even if that tomb was only later identified as belonging to Ankan Tennō, right?

Well, not so fast.

The provenance on the bowl is a bit more tricky than that. You see, the bowl itself came to light in 1950, when a private individual in Fuse, Ōsaka invited visiting scholar Ishida Mosaku to take a look. According to his report at the time, the bowl was in a black lacquered box and wrapped in a special cloth, with a written inscription that indicated that the bowl had been donated to a temple in Furuichi named Sairin-ji.

There are documents from the late Edo period indicating that various items were donated to Sairin-ji temple between the 16th to the 18th centuries, including quote-unquote “utensils” said to have been washed out of the tomb believed to be that of Ankan Tennō. Ishida Mosaku and other scholars immediately connected this glass bowl with one or more of those accounts. They were encouraged by the fact that there is a similar bowl found in the Shōsōin, an 8th century repository at Tōdai-ji temple, in Nara, which houses numerous artifacts donated on behalf of Shōmu Tennō. Despite the gulf of time between them—two hundred years between the 6th and 8th centuries—this was explained away in the same way that Han dynasty mirrors, made in about the 3rd century, continued to show up in burials for many hundreds of years afterwards, likewise passed down as familial heirlooms.

Still, the method of its discovery, the paucity of direct evidence, and the lack of any direct connection with where it came from leaves us wondering—did this bowl really come from the tomb of Ankan Tennō? Even moreso, did it come from a 6th century tomb at all? Could it not have come from some other tomb?

We could tie ourselves up in knots around this question, and I would note that if you look carefully at the Tokyo National Museum’s own accounting of the object they do mention that it is quote-unquote “possibly” from the tomb of Ankan Tennō.

What does seem clear, however, is that its manufacture was not in Japan. Indeed, however it came to our small group of islands on the northeastern edge of the Eurasian continent, it had quite the journey, because it does appear to be genuinely from the Middle East—specifically from around the time of the Sassanian or Sassanid empire, the first Iranian empire, centered on the area of modern Iran.

And it isn’t the only one. First off, of course, there is the 8th century bowl in the Shousoin I just mentioned, but there are also examples of broken glass found on Okinoshima, an island deep in the middle of the strait between Kyushu and the Korean peninsula, which has a long history as a sacred site, mentioned in the Nihon Shoki, and attached to the Munakata shrine in modern Fukuoka. Both Okinoshima and the Shōsōin—at least as part of the larger Nara cultural area—are on the UNESCO register of World Heritage sites, along with the Mozu-Furuichi kofun group, of which the Takaya Tsukiyama kofun is one..

Okinoshima is a literal treasure trove for archaeologists. However, its location and status have made it difficult to fully explore. The island is still an active sacred site, and so investigations are balanced with respect for local tradition. The lone occupant of the island is a Shinto priest, one of about two dozen who rotate spending 10 days out at the island, tending the sacred site. Women are still not allowed, and for centuries, one day a year they allowed up to 200 men on the island after they had purified themselves in the ocean around the island. Since then, they have also opened up to researchers, as well as military and media, at least in some instances.

The island is apparently littered with offerings. Investigations have demonstrated that this island has been in use since at least the 4th century. As a sacred site, guarding the strait between Kyushu and the Korean peninsula, fishermen and sailors of all kinds would make journeys to the island and leave offerings of one kind or another, and many of them are still there: clay vessels, swords, iron ingots, bronze mirrors, and more. The island’s location, which really is in the middle of the straits, and not truly convenient to any of the regular trading routes, means that it has never really been much of a strategic site, just a religious one, and one that had various religious taboos, so it hasn’t undergone the centuries of farming and building that have occurred elsewhere.

Offerings are scattered in various places, often scattered around or under boulders and large rocks that were perhaps seen as particularly worthy of devotion. Since researchers have been allowed in, over 80,000 treasures have been found and catalogued. Among those artifacts that have been brought back is glass, including glass from Sassanid Persia. Pieces of broken glass bowls, like the one said to have come from Ankan’s tomb, as well as what appear to be beads made from broken glass pieces, have been recovered over the years, once more indicating their presence in the trade routes to the mainland, although when, exactly, they came over can be a little more difficult to place.

That might be helped by two other glass artifacts, also found in the archaeological exhibit of the Heiseikan in the Tokyo National Museum: a glass bowl and dish discovered at Niizawa Senzuka kofun Number 126, in Kashihara city, in Nara.

This burial is believed to date to the latter half of the 5th century, and included an iron sword, numerous gold fittings and jewelry, and even an ancient clothes iron, which at the time looked like a small frying pan, where you could put hot coals or similar items in the pan and use the flat bottom to help iron out wrinkles in cloth. Alongside all of this were also discovered two glass vessels. One was a dark, cobalt-blue plate, with a stand and very shallow conical shape. The other was a round glass bowl with an outwardly flared lip. Around the smooth sides, the glass has been marked with three rows of circular dots that go all the way around, not dissimilar from the indentations in the Ankan and Shōsōin glass bowls.

All of these, again, are believed to have come from Sassanid Persia, modern Iran, and regardless of the provenance of the Ankan bowl, it seems that we have clear evidence that Sassanian glassworks were making their way to Japan. But how? How did something like glass—hardly known for being the most robust of materials—make it all the way from Sassanid Persia to Yamato between the 5th and 8th centuries?

To start with, let’s look at Sassanid Persia and its glass.

Sassanid Persia—aka Sassanid or Sassanian Iran—is the name given to the empire that replaced the Parthian empire, and is generally agreed to have been founded sometime in the early 3rd century. The name “Sassanid” refers to the legendary dynastic founder, Sassan, though the first historical sovereign appears to be Ardeshir I, who helped put the empire on the map.

Ardeshir I called his empire “Eran sahr”, and it is often known as an Iranian or Persian empire, based on their ties to Pars and the use of the Middle Persian, or Farsi, language. For those not already well aware, Farsi is one of several Iranian languages, though over the years many of the various Iranian speaking peoples would often be classified as “Persian” in English literature. That said, there is quite a diversity of Iranian languages and people who speak them, including Farsi, Pashto, Dari, Tajik, and the ancient Sogdian language, which I’m sure we’ll touch on more given their importance in the ancient silk road trade. Because of the ease with which historical “Iranian” ethnic groups can be conflated with the modern state, I am going to largely stick with the term Persian, here, but just be aware that the two words are often, though not always, interchangeable.

The Sassanid dynasty claimed a link to the older Achaemenid dynasty, and over the subsequent five centuries of their rule they extended their borders, dominating the area between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, eastward to much of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan, running right up to the Hindu Kush and the Pamir mountains. They held sway over much of Central Asia, including the area of Transoxiana. With that they had access to both the sea routes, south of India and the overland routes through the Tianshan mountains and the northern and southern routes around the great Taklamakan desert – so, basically, any trade passing between Central and East Asia would pass through Sassanid territory.

The Persian empire of the Sassanids was pre-Islamic—Islamic Arab armies would not arrive until about the 7th century, eventually bringing an end to the Sassanid dynasty. Until that point, the Persian empire was largely Zoroastrian, an Iranian religion based around fire temples, restored after the defeat of the Parthians, where eternal flames were kept burning day and night as part of their ritual practice.

The Sassanids inherited a Persian culture in an area that had been dominated by the Parthians, and before that the Hellenistic Seleucids, and their western edge bordered with the Roman empire. Rome’s establishment in the first century BCE coincided with the invention of glassblowing techniques, and by the time of the Sassanid Empire these techniques seem to have been well established in the region.

Sassanid glass decorated with patterns of ground, cut, and polished hollow facets—much like what we see in the examples known in the Japanese islands—comes from about the 5th century onward. Prior to that, the Sassanian taste seems to have been for slightly less extravagant vessels, with straight or slightly rounded walls.

Sassanid glass was dispersed in many different directions along their many trade routes across the Eurasian continent, and archaeologists have been able to identify glass from this region not just by its shape, but by the various physical properties based on the formulas and various raw materials used to make the glass.

As for the trip to Japan, this was most likely through the overland routes. And so the glass would have been sold to merchants who would take it up through Transoxiana, through passes between the Pamirs and the Tianshan mountains, and then through a series of oasis towns and city-states until it reached Dunhuang, on the edge of the ethnic Han sphere of influence.

For a majority of this route, the glass was likely carried by Sogdians, another Iranian speaking people from the region of Transoxiana. Often simply lumped in with the rest of the Iranian speaking world as “Persians”, Sogdians had their own cultural identity, and the area of Sogdia is known to have existed since at least the ancient Achaemenid dynasty. From the 4th to the 8th century, Sogdian traders plied the sands of Central Eurasia, setting up a network of communities along what would come to be known as the Silk Road.

It is along this route that the glassware, likely packed in straw or some other protective material, was carried on the backs of horses, camels, and people along a journey of several thousand kilometers, eventually coming to the fractious edge of the ethnic Han sphere. Whether it was these same Sogdian traders that then made their way to the ocean and upon boats out to the Japanese islands is unknown, but it is not hard imagining crates being transferred from merchant to merchant, east, to the Korean Peninsula, and eventually across the sea.

The overland route from Sogdia is one of the more well-known—and well-worn—routes on what we modernly know as the Silk Road, and it’s very much worth taking the time here to give a brief history of how this conduit between Western Asia/Europe and Eastern Asia developed over the centuries.

One of the main crossroads of this area is the Tarim Basin, the area that, today, forms much of Western China, with the Tianshan mountains in the north and the Kunlun Mountains, on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, to the south. In between is a large desert, the Taklamakan desert, which may have once been a vast inland sea. Even by the Han dynasty, a vast saltwater body known as the Puchang Sea existed in its easternmost regions. Comparable to some of the largest of the Great Lakes, and fed by glacial run-off, the lake eventually dwindled to become the salt-marshes around Lop Nur. And yet, researchers still find prominent boat burials out in what otherwise seems to be the middle of the desert.

Around the Tarim basin were various cultures, often centered on oases at the base of the mountains. Runoff from melting ice and snow in the mountains meant a regular supply of water, and by following the mountains one could navigate from watering hole to watering hole, creating a natural roadway through the arid lands. In the middle of the Basin, however, is the great Taklamakan desert, and even during the Han dynasty it was a formidable and almost unpassable wasteland. One could wander the sands for days or weeks with no water and no indication of direction other than the punishing sun overhead. It is hardly a nice place and remains largely unpopulated, even today.

While there were various cultures and city-states around the oasis towns, the first major power that we know held sway, at least over the northern route, were the Xiongnu. Based in the area of modern Mongolia, the Xiongnu swept down during the Qin and early Han dynasties, displacing or conquering various people.

An early exploration of the Tarim basin and its surroundings was conducted by the Han dynasty diplomat, Zhang Qian. Zhang Qian secretly entered Xiongnu territory with the goal of reaching the Yuezhi—a nomadic group that had been one of those displaced by the Xiongnu. The Yuezhi had been kicked out of their lands in the Gansu region and moved all the way to the Ferghana valley, in modern Tajikistan, a part of the region known as Transoxiana. Although Zhang Qian was captured and spent 10 years in service to the Xiongnu, he never forgot his mission and eventually made his way to the Yuezhi. By that time, however, the Yuezhi had settled in to their new life, and they weren’t looking for revenge.

While Zhang Qian’s news may have been somewhat disappointing for the Han court, what was perhaps more important was the intelligence he brought back concerning the routes through the Tarim basin, and the various people there, as well as lands beyond. The Han dynasty continued to assert itself in the area they called the “Western Regions”, and General Ban Chao would eventually be sent to defeat the Xiongnu and loosen their hold in the region, opening up the area all the way to modern Kashgar.

Ban Chao would even send an emissary, Gan Ying, to try to make the journey all the way to the Roman empire, known to the Han court as “Daqin”, using the name of the former Qin dynasty as a sign of respect for what they had heard. However, Gan Ying only made it as far as the land of Anxi—the name given to Parthia—where he was told that to make it to Rome, or Daqin, would require crossing the ocean on a voyage that could take months or even years. Hearing this, Gan Ying decided to turn back and report on what he knew.

Of course if he actually made it to the Persian Gulf—or even to the Black Sea, as some claim—Gan Ying would have been much closer to Rome than the accounts lead us to believe. It is generally thought that he was being deliberately mislead by Parthian merchants who felt they might be cut out if Rome and the Han Dynasty formed more direct relations. Silks from East Asia, along with other products, were already a lucrative opportunity for middlemen across the trade routes, and nobody wanted to be cut out of that position if they could help it.

That said, the Parthians and, following them the Sassanid Persians, continued to maintain relationships with dynasties at the other end of what we know as the Silk Road, at least when they could. The Sassanid Persians, when they came to power, were known to the various northern and southern dynasties as Bosi—possibly pronounced something like Puasie, at the time, no doubt their attempt to render the term “Parsi”. We know of numerous missions in both directions between various dynasties, and Sassanian coins are regularly found the south of modern China.

And so we can see that even in the first and second centuries, Eurasia was much more connected than one might otherwise believe. Goods would travel from oasis town to oasis town, and be sold in markets, where they might just be picked up by another merchant. Starting in the fourth century, the Sogdian merchants began to really make their own presence known along these trade routes. They would set up enclaves in various towns, and merchants would travel from Sogdian enclave to Sogdian enclave with letters of recommendation, as well as personal letters for members of the community, setting up their own early postal service. This allowed the Sogdian traders to coordinate activities and kept them abreast of the latest news.

I’m not sure we have a clear indication how long this trip would take. Theoretically, one could travel from Kashgar to Xi’an and back in well under a year, if one were properly motivated and provisioned—it is roughly 4,000 kilometers, and travel would have likely been broken up with long stays to rest and refresh at the various towns along the way.

I’ve personally had the opportunity to travel from Kashgar to Turpan, though granted it was in the comfort of an air conditioned bus. Still, having seen the modern conditions, the trip would be grueling, but not impossible back in the day, and if the profits were lucrative enough, then why not do it—it is not dissimilar to the adventurers from Europe in the 16th century who went out to sea to find their own fortunes.

And so the glass bowl likely made its way through the markets of the Tarim basin, to the markets of various capitals in the Yellow River or Yangzi regions—depending on who was in charge in any given year—and eventually made its way to the Korean peninsula and from there to a ship across the Korean strait.

Of course, those ships weren’t simply holding a single glass vessel. Likely they were laden with a wide variety of goods. Some things, such as fabric, incense, and other more biodegradable products would not be as likely to remain, and even glass breaks and oxidizes, and metal rusts away. Furthermore, many of the goods had likely been picked over by the time any shipments arrived in the islands, making things such as these glass bowls even more rare and scarce.

Still, this bowl, whether it belonged to Ankan or not, tells us a story. It is the story of a much larger world, well beyond the Japanese archipelago, and one that will be encroaching more and more as we continue to explore this period. Because it wasn’t just physical goods that were being transported along the Silk Road. The travelers also carried with them news and new ideas. One of these ideas was a series of teachings that came out of India and arrived in China during the Han dynasty, known as Buddhism. It would take until the 6th century, but Buddhism would eventually make its way to Japan, the end of the Silk Road.

But that is for another episode. For now, I think we’ll close out our story of Ankan and his glass bowl. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little diversion, and from here we’ll continue on with our narrative as we edge closer and closer to the formal introduction of Buddhism and the era known as the Asuka Period.

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And that’s all for now. Thank you again, and I’ll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo’s Chronicles of Japan.