Hereditary lords · The temple and shrine corporations · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Ōuchi of Suō

The Ōuchi are the local family that keeps the provincial office of Suō at work: hereditary clerks (zaichō kanjin) with the title 'suke', a hall in the Ōuchi valley near Yamaguchi, and the people of the province behind them.

Suō's revenues have gone to Tōdaiji since the 1180s for the rebuilding of the Great Buddha Hall, and the temple's agents run the timber slides in the hills; the Ōuchi serve as the working government and take a share. The Baekje descent they claim is a family legend. They are not yet constables and have no great lordship.

Who he is

Name
not known; the head on 1 January 1200 is not pinned
Title
Head of the Ōuchi, the 'Ōuchi no suke' of the provincial office
Family
Tatara house; claims descent from a prince of Baekje [rec, legend]
Confidence
low

Recollection; no head is named because none was checked.

Overlord

Tōdaiji (as the province's holder); the court's governor

What it holds

  • The leading place in the provincial office of Suō
  • The Ōuchi valley

How things stand that morning

Under Tōdaiji's province; quiet. They are the people to whom a ruler of Suō would have to speak.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Recollection; not checked.

Primary sources for Temple powers (west)

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

  • Hundred Times Refined Extracts: court annals (late thirteenth century, from court diaries). Short dated annals of the imperial court excerpted from courtiers' diaries, among them the Gyokuyo and the Meigetsuki. Read online
  • Mirror of the East, Anonymous; compiled by officials of the Kamakura shogunate (compiled about 1300 from the shogunate's records, diaries and family documents). The Kamakura house's own chronicle, in daily entries. Read online
  • Jottings of a Fool: an interpretative history of Japan, Jien (慈円) (about 1219 to 1220, revised to about 1223). A history by Kujo Kanezane's brother, head of the Tendai school and the leading churchman of the court, written to explain the fall of the Kujo and the rise of the warriors as the working of principle (dori). Read online
  • Leaves of Jade: the diary of Kujo Kanezane, Kujo (Fujiwara) Kanezane (九條兼實) (1164 to 1200, as a daily diary). The diary of the former regent, Yoritomo's ally at court, who had been driven from power in the Kenkyu purge of 1196 and lived in retirement in 1200. Read online
  • Record of the Bright Moon: the diary of Fujiwara no Teika, Fujiwara no Teika (藤原定家) (1180 to 1235, as a daily diary, with gaps). The diary of the poet and courtier, then thirty-eight and a middle-ranking official of the Kujo house. Read online
  • Surviving Documents of the Kamakura Period, Various; collected by Takeuchi Rizo (竹内理三) (documents of 1185 to 1333, collected and printed 1971 to 1997). The collected charters, deeds, court orders, shogunal directives, temple records and land registers of the Kamakura age, printed in date order. Read online
  • The Tale of the Heike, Anonymous; traditionally attributed to Shinano no Zenji Yukinaga, performed and reshaped by blind reciters (early thirteenth century in its first form; the standard Kakuichi text was fixed in 1371). The epic of the Genpei war, in the form the reciters gave it over the century after 1200. Read online

Sources and studies

  1. OMNIA kja regional brief (KJA_BRIEF.md), the campaign's dated traps and realm table
  2. OMNIA board notes and places for area kjw (starting lead only, checked against the sources)
  3. Mikael Adolphson, The Gates of Power: Monks, Courtiers and Warriors in Premodern Japan (background reading, not re-read in this session)

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.