Arai Hakuseki
William Wayne Farris reviews the history of scholarly debates over Himiko and her domain Yamatai. The Edo-period philosophers Arai Hakuseki and Motoori Norinaga began the controversies over whether Yamatai was located in Northern Kyushu or Yamato Province in the Kinki region of central Honshū and whether the "Wei Zhi" or the "Nihon Shoki" was historically more trustworthy. The Confucianist Arai accepted the Chinese history as more reliable, and first equated Himiko with Jingū and Yamatai with Yamato. The Kokugaku scholar Motoori accepted the traditional Japanese myth-history as more reliable, and dismissed its "Wei Zhi" quotations as later accretions. He hypothesized that a king from Kumaso sent emissaries who masqueraded as Jingū's officials to the Wei court, thus leading Wei to mistake them for representatives of Himiko. says, "Motoori's usurpation hypothesis ("gisen setsu") carried great weight for the next century."