【Summary】

1.   Around 100 BC, a segment of the Jiangnan people crossed over to Kyushu 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 human 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, Fukuoka), and she enshrined the Sun. This was retained as an ethnic memory among the Jiangnan people.
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, Silla people (as an ethnic group) migrated to the backward region, Itokoku. Avoiding the powerful Nakoku, they settled there. The king of Itokoku could read Chinese characters.
5.   Around 50 BC, "Iwarebiko," said to be the sixth generation from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, launched an invasion from the northern coast of Kyushu far into the Kinai region. There is no archaeological evidence suggesting that "Iwarebiko" was enthroned 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."
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 Japan Sea region established and prospered in a kingdom at Izumo.
10.   Around 180 AD, the people who had fled Nakoku (Nakatokuni) toward the Seto Inland Sea prospered in Kibi.
11.   After 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. The unrest subsided after 182 AD, when Himiko was welcomed from Hyugami Gorge as queen onto Queen's Mountain (Okusa, Setaka Town, Miyama City, Fukuoka), with the Itokoku king granted overarching administrative inspection over all thirty countries, under the title Daisotsu. The Later Han (Lelang Commandery) mediated.
12.   Around 200 AD, a great king appeared in Kibi, called "Hatsukunishirasu-sumeramikoto" (the first emperor), who was celebrated in the image of the ancient eastern-expedition hero "Iwarebiko." Subsequently, further emperors known as the "eight undocumented generations" emerged in the Kibi Dynasty and remained in collective memory. 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.
13.   After 220 AD, "people," "goods," "culture," and "memories" from the Kingdom of Kibi began to flow gradually into Makimuku. Around 290 AD, the tenth emperor, Sujin, appeared anew in Makimuku as "Hatsukunishirasu-sumeramikoto," and the Kibi Dynasty disappeared accordingly.
      According to the "IntCal20" radiocarbon calibration curve published by Cambridge University in 2020, there is no archaeological evidence to suggest any royal authority existed in the Nara Basin before 280 AD — there were only communities such as moated settlements.
14.   In the seventh century (reign of Emperor Tenmu, 673–686, the 40th emperor), the Yamato polity broke with clan-based rule and aimed to form a Ritsuryō state centered on the emperor. Close kin, the provinces of Awa and Awaji, became new threats.
    　The compilation of historical records also served as a tool for integrating clans and ethnic minorities. The island deity "Izanagi" of Awaji Island, together with "Izanami" of Awa, was adopted as the ancestral deity (the parents of Amaterasu). Awaji was made the first island born in the mythology of the land's formation. Meanwhile, Hyuga was adopted as the homeland of "Iwarebiko."