Genealogy
Before his ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne, his personal name (his imina) was Hatsusebe-shinnō, also known as Hatsusebe no Waka-sazaki.His name at birth was Hatsusebe no Miko (長谷部皇子). He was the twelfth son of Emperor Kimmei. His mother was , a daughter of Soga no Iname, who was the chief, or Ō-omi, of the Soga clan.
Sushun had one Empress and two Imperial children.
Events of Sushun's life
He succeeded his half brother, Emperor Yōmei in 587, and lived in the Kurahashi Palace (Kurahashi no Miya) in Yamato.
- 587: In the 2nd year of Yōmei-tennō's reign (用明天皇2年), the emperor died, and despite a dispute over who should follow him as sovereign, the succession (‘‘senso’’) was received by another son of Emperor Kimmei, one of Yōmei's younger brothers. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Sushun is said to have acceded to the throne (‘‘sokui’’).
He came to the throne with the support of the Soga clan and Empress Suiko, his half sister and the widow of Emperor Bidatsu. Initially, the Mononobe clan, a rival clan of the Sogas, allied with Prince Anahobe, another son of Kimmei, and attempted to have him installed as emperor. Soga no Umako, who succeeded his father as Ōomi of the Soga clan, eventually killed Mononobe no Moriya, the head of the Mononobe clan, which led to its decline. Umako then installed Emperor Sushun on the throne.
As time went on, Sushun eventually became resentful of Umako's power, and wanted him deposed. It is said that one day, he saw a wild boar and proclaimed, "I want to kill Soga Umako like this wild boar." This angered Soga no Umako and, perhaps out of fear of being struck first, Umako had Sushun assassinated by in 592.
Emperor Sushun's reign lasted for five years before his death at the age of 72.
References
- Aston, William G. (2005). Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company. ISBN 0-804-83674-4
- Brown, Delmer M. and Ichirō Ishida, eds. (1979). [Jien, c. 1220], Gukanshō (The Future and the Past, a translation and study of the Gukanshō, an interpretative history of Japan written in 1219). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03460-0
- Titsingh, Isaac, ed. (1834). [Siyun-sai Rin-siyo/Hayashi Gahō (1652) ], Nipon o daï itsi ran; ou, Annales des empereurs du Japon, tr. par M. Isaac Titsingh avec l'aide de plusieurs interprètes attachés au comptoir hollandais de Nangasaki; ouvrage re., complété et cor. sur l'original japonais-chinois, accompagné de notes et précédé d'un Aperçu d'histoire mythologique du Japon, par M. J. Klaproth. Paris: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland. ...Click link for digitized, full-text copy of this book (in French)
- Varley, H. Paul , ed. (1980). [Kitabatake Chikafusa, 1359], Jinnō Shōtōki ("A Chronicle of Gods and Sovereigns: Jinnō Shōtōki of Kitabatake Chikafusa" translated by H. Paul Varley). New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-04940-4
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Thursday April 24, 2008 at 09:07:05 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation
Copyright © 2008, Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.