From the book
Rice-Country Rulers and Warriors
The full roll behind one paragraph of Chapter 2
Rice-growing East Asia produced a different record from wheat-growing Europe and the Near East. The book keeps the count; this page keeps the names.
Supports Chapter 2, “The Agricultural Down Payment.” The printed book points here for the detail it no longer carries.
Japan’s eight reigning empresses
Japan seated eight reigning empresses, six of them between the sixth and eighth centuries and two more after long intervals, before Confucian-era restrictions permanently closed the succession.
| # | Empress | When |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Suiko | Sixth to eighth centuries |
| 2 | Kogyoku | Sixth to eighth centuries |
| 3 | Jito | Sixth to eighth centuries |
| 4 | Genmei | Sixth to eighth centuries |
| 5 | Gensho | Sixth to eighth centuries |
| 6 | Koken | Sixth to eighth centuries |
| 7 | Meishō | Seventeenth century, after a long interval |
| 8 | Go-Sakuramachi | Eighteenth century, after a long interval |
The wider roll
| Who | Where | When | What the book records |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queen Seondeok | Silla, Korea | 632 CE | Enthroned in a rice kingdom on the peninsula; built the Cheomseongdae observatory, the oldest surviving astronomical observatory in East Asia. |
| Wu Zetian | Tang China | 690 | Seized the throne outright and ruled for fifteen years, the only undisputed female emperor in Chinese history. |
| Women rulers of Sumatra | Southeast Asia | Seventeenth century | So many women held political power that male authorities eventually moved to ban female rule entirely. The ban itself is the evidence. |
| Tomoe Gozen | Japan | Battle of Awazu, 1184 | One of the onna-bugeisha, the female warriors of the samurai class; fought among three hundred warriors at Awazu. |
| The Trung Sisters | Vietnam | 40 CE | Raised an army and drove the Han Dynasty out of their homeland: the first Vietnamese independence movement, led by two women. |
“The value of daughters was never questioned in Southeast Asia as it was in China, India, and the Middle East.”
“A warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or a god, mounted or on foot.”
What the roll is evidence of
In Southeast Asia women dominated the marketplace and controlled household finances. The tradition of female military leadership in rice-growing East and Southeast Asia is thin but real. In wheat-growing Europe and the Near East it is essentially absent until the modern era, and where it appears (Joan of Arc, Boudica) it is treated as miraculous precisely because it violates the expectation the crop built.