Reexamination of the Iconography of Empress Jingu:

<p>Even before the establishment of the Japanese Empire, the legend of Empress Jingu had been used politically as a justification for colonial rule and as a basis for the idea of a divine nation. Therefore, when prior research focused on the representation of Empress Jingu, it generally adopted interpretations based on the ideology of “Sankan-Seibatsu” (the conquest of three countries in ancient Korea). However, the Empress Jingu, who crossed the gender line in the modern nation-state, was an entity that created a conflict with the male emperor and modern gender norms that the Meiji government was trying to promote. However, previous studies have rarely mentioned how the discrepancies were resolved and have not been verified.</p><p>In this research note, I will analyze the iconography of Empress Jingu from a historical perspective and make a typology of the iconography to show that the iconography of Empress Jingu, which tends to be treated as an “unchanging image” associated with the ideology of the conquest of “SankanSaibatsu”, was in fact influenced by the prevailing trends, social conditions, and political thought of each period.</p><p>In addition, the annexation of Japan and Korea by Emperor Meiji led to the reincorporation of Empress Jinguʼs feats, which violated modern gender norms, into modern womenʼs norms as a nonthreatening presence (wife and mother of the Emperor), and eventually to the convergence of noncombative and maternal images represented by the seated statue of Empress Jingu at Yakushiji Temple. The purpose of this research is to clarify the transition from the image of the emperorʼs wife and mother to the non-combative and maternal image represented by the seated image of Empress Jingu at Yakushiji Temple.</p>