All-powerful Himiko
Two thousand years ago the land we now know as Japan was a patchwork of over a hundred small kingdoms, perpetually at war. Armies fought to grab more and better land for farming and to control the water supplies of river and lakes, fighting with bows and arrows and stone and bronze weapons. They lived in fortified communities surrounded by moats and walls with watch towers and gated fences, where the king lived in the inner enclosure.
In 190 AD thirty of these kingdoms decided they’d had enough of warfare. The kings made a truce and formed a federation and, seeing that men had proved unable to maintain the peace, they appointed a woman to rule over them. It was a little more than a hundred years after Boudicca led her ill-fated rebellion against the Romans. But these kings chose not a warrior queen but a woman who had a very different sort of power. […]
From The History Girls Blog, first published on 4 October, 2024.