Mononobe clan

In this Japanese name, the surname is Mononobe.

Mononobe clan 物部ものべ氏し
Parent house	Imperial House of Japan
Titles	Various
Founder	Mononobe no Toochone
Final ruler	Mononobe no Moriya
Dissolution	587
Ruled until	587, Battle at Mount Shigi
Cadet branches	Isonokami clan

The Mononobe clan (物部ものべ氏し, Mononobe uji) was a Japanese aristocratic kin group (uji) of the Kofun period, known for its military opposition to the Soga clan. The Mononobe were opposed to the spread of Buddhism, partly on religious grounds, claiming that the local deities would be offended by the worshiping of foreign deities, but also as the result of feelings of conservatism and a degree of xenophobia. The Nakatomi clan, ancestors of the Fujiwara, were also Shinto ritualists allied with the Mononobe in opposition to Buddhism.

The Mononobe, like many other major families of the time, were something of a corporation or guild in addition to being a proper family by blood-relation. While the only members of the clan to appear in any significant way in the historical record were statesmen, the clan as a whole was known as the Corporation of Arms or Armorers.

History

Further information: Soga–Mononobe conflict

The Mononobe were said to have been descended from Nigihayahi no Mikoto, (饒にょう速そく日び命いのち), a legendary figure who is said to have ruled Yamato before the conquest of Emperor Jimmu. His descendant Mononobe no Toochine (物部ものべ十じゅう千せん根ね), known as the founder of the clan, was given Isonokami Shrine by Yamatohime-no-mikoto, the daughter of Emperor Suinin. He then began using the name Mononobe.

In the 6th century, a number of violent clashes erupted between the Mononobe and the Soga clan. According to the Nihon Shoki, one particularly important conflict occurred after the Emperor Yōmei died after a very short reign. Mononobe no Moriya, the head of the clan, supported one prince to succeed Yōmei, while Soga no Umako chose another. The conflict came to a head in a battle at Kisuri (present-day Osaka) in the year 587, where the Mononobe clan were defeated and crushed at the Battle of Shigisan. Following Moriya's death, Buddhism saw a further spread in Japan.

In 686, the Mononobe reformed as the Isonokami clan, named thus due to their close ties with Isonokami Shrine, a Shinto shrine which doubled as an imperial armory.

Family Tree

Nigihayahi-no-mikoto (饒にょう速そく日び命いのち), legendary figure who is said to have ruled Yamato before the conquest of Emperor Jimmu.
 　┃
Umashimaji-no-mikoto (可美かみ真しん手しゅ命いのち)
 　┇
(5 generations missing)
 　┇
Mononobe no Tōchine (物部ものべ十じゅう千せん根ね), known as the founder of the clan.
 　┃
Mononobe no Ikui (物部ものべ胆きも咋)
 　┃
Ikoto (物部ものべ五ご十じゅう琴きん)
 　┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
Ikofutsu (物部ものべ伊い莒弗)                                                        Mukiri (麦むぎ入いれ)                          Iwamochi (石持いしもち)
 　┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓                              ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓                   ┃
Me (目め)           Futsukuru (布ぬの都と久留ひさどめ)        Makura (真ま椋むく)                     Oomae (大前おおまえ)  Omae (小前こまえ)             Ushiro (菟うさぎ代だい)
 　┃
Arayama (荒山あらやま)
 　┃
Okoshi (尾お輿こし)
 　┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
Mikari (御ご狩かり)                  Moriya (守屋もりや)                     Nieko (贄にえ子こ), his daughter married Soga no Umako
 　┃
Me (目め)
 　┃
Umaro (宇麻呂まろ)
 　┃
Isonokami no Maro (石上麻呂いそのかみのまろ), changed his surname and founded the Isonokami clan (石上いしがみ氏し)

Descendants of Mononobe no Futsukuru (物部もののべ布ぬの都と久留ひさどめ), see above tree.

Futsukuru (布ぬの都と久留ひさどめ)
 　┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
Itabi (木蓮もくれん子こ)                              Ogoto (小事しょうじ)
 　┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
Masara (麻あさ佐良さら)                 Yakahime (宅たく媛ひめ), consort of Emperor Ankan
 　┃
Arakabi (麁鹿火ひ)
 　┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
Iwayumi (石弓いしゆみ)                           Kagehime (影かげ媛ひめ)

References

• Sansom, George (1958). A History of Japan to 1334. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

See also

• Mononobe no Arakabi
• Mononobe no Moriya
• Mononobe no Okoshi
• Isonokami no Maro
• Kujiki
• Mononobe-jinja