【Summary】

1.   Around 100 BC, a group of people from the Jiangnan crossed over to Kyushu Island and landed in "Yamato" - the region around Miyama City and Yanagawa City in Fukuoka Prefecture. The "Great Discontinuity" between the world of the gods and the earthly world was the Jiangnan people's collective memory of "voyage" as an ethnic group. "Yamato" was "the land where everything began."
2.   In the years after 100 BC, a daughter of the Jiangnan people was born deep in the mountains of Yamato, in the Hyugami Gorge (Yabe Village, Yame District in Fukuoka Prefecture), and she enshrined the Sun. This was retained as an ethnic memory among the Jiangnan people as a deity (Amaterasu-Ohmikami).
3.   Around 50 BC, kingdoms of the Jiangnan people began to rise along the northern coast of Kyushu. The "Geography Treatise" of the Book of Han referred to these Jiangnan people as "Wa people." However, the people of these kingdoms shared a common self-awareness as the "Yamato" people.
4. Around 50 BC, Iwarebiko, said to be the sixth generation descendant of Amaterasu-Omikami, invaded from the northern coast of Kyushu as far as the Kinki region. No archaeological traces suggest Iwarebiko ascended the throne at the foot of Mount Unebi. However, the memory of this "battle" was passed on among the northern Kyushu kingdoms as the legend of the eastern expedition of the hero "Iwarebiko."
5.     Around 50 BC, Silla people (as an ethnic group) migrated to the underdeveloped region, Itokoku. Avoiding the powerful Nanokuni, they settled there. The king of Itokoku could read Chinese characters.
6.   In 57 AD, the "King of Na-Wa" of northern Kyushu paid tribute to the Later Han and received the "Han Dynasty Gold Seal for the King of Na-Wa" (the Book of Later Han).
7.   Around 100 AD, the kingdoms along the northern Kyushu coast, threatened by Itokoku’s growing military power through ironware, retreated and resettled toward the Seto Inland Sea region. Munakata Kingdom retreated to the Japan Sea region.
8.   In 107 AD, King Suisho of Itokoku led the remaining kingdoms in northern Kyushu and paid tribute to the Later Han as the "King of Wa" (Book of Later Han).
9.   Around 150 AD, the people who had fled from Munakata toward the Sea of Japan established and prospered in a kingdom at Izumo.
10.   Around 180 AD, the people who had resettled toward the Seto Inland Sea prospered in Kibi.
11.   Around 180 AD, the King of Itokoku invaded neighboring regions of Chikugo in northern Kyushu (the Wa kingdom's Great Unrest). Here, "Wa" as recorded in the Later Han referred to Itokoku, a tribute state seen from the Later Han's perspective. It did not refer to the entire Japanese archipelago.
12.   The unrest subsided after 182 AD, when Himiko was welcomed from Hyugami Gorge as queen onto Queen's Mountain (Okusa, Setaka Town, Miyama City in Fukuoka Prefecture), with the Itokoku king granted overarching administrative inspection over all thirty provinces, under the title Daisotsu. The Later Han (Lelang Commandery) mediated.
13.   Around 200 AD, a great king appeared in Kibi. He was praised as the ancient hero of the eastern expedition legend, "Iharebiko." After him, great kings who would later be known as the "Eight Unrecorded Generations" appeared in the Kibi Dynasty, leaving their mark on people's memories. The only threat to the Kibi Dynasty was the distant kin - the Izumo Kingdom, also of the Yamato people. As a result, "Izumo" occupies one-third of Japanese mythology.
14.   In the latter half of the third century, people, goods, culture, and memories began gradually to flow from the Kibi Kingdom to Makimuku. Around 290 AD, the tenth emperor, Sujin, appeared anew in Makimuku. He is later known as "Hatsukunishirasu-sumeramikoto," and the Kibi Dynasty disappeared accordingly.
       According to the IntCal20 calibrated radiocarbon dating curve published by the University of Cambridge in 2020, prior to 280 AD, while living groups such as moated settlements existed in the Nara Basin, there are no archaeological traces suggesting the existence of any form of royal authority; such evidence is entirely absent.
15.   For the royal authority at Makimuku, the powerful clans stretching from the Tokai region to the Kanto region posed a threat. To manage the Tokai region, Ise was adopted as the seat of the imperial ancestral deity, Amaterasu Ohmikami. To manage the Kanto region, Kashima Shrine and Katori Shrine were designated as imperial shrines.
    　In the seventh century (during the reign of Emperor Tenmu, the 40th emperor, 673-686), the Yamato royal authority sought to break away from clan-based politics and establish a Ritsuryo state centered on the emperor. However, the nearby Yamato ethnic groups in Awa Province and Awaji Province became new threats. Furthermore, in distant Hyuga, where the Hayato people resided, large-scale rebellions were recurring.
16.   The compilation of historical records also served as a tool to integrate powerful clans and minority groups. The island deity "Izanagi" of Awaji Province was adopted, alongside "Izanami" of Awa Province, as imperial ancestral deities (the parents of Amaterasu Ohmikami). Awaji Island was adopted as the first island born within the archipelago. While the Hayato were designated as "foreigners" in the Taiho Code and required interpreters at the imperial court, Hyuga, their homeland, was adopted as the birthplace of "Iharebiko," "Ninigi-no-Mikoto," and "Konohana-Sakuya-no-bime."