Prince Ōtsu

Prince Ōtsu was a son of Emperor Tenmu and Princess Ōta, an elder sister of the future Empress Jitō. His elder sister, Princess Ōku, served at Ise. The Nihon shoki, a royal chronicle completed in 720, records Ōtsu's participation in government from 683. He belonged to the royal generation in which Prince Kusakabe, Tenmu's son by Uno—the future Jitō—was designated crown prince. [S01, S02]

After Tenmu died in 686, Uno governed the court. In the tenth lunar month, Ōtsu was accused of treason, arrested with more than thirty others and put to death at his home. The surviving chronicle declares him guilty but supplies no independently verifiable account of a completed conspiracy. A later decree pardoned most of the alleged followers and exiled two. Its claims and punishments show how succession unsettled a wider circle of officials and associates. [S02]

The chronicle describes Ōtsu's consort, Princess Yamanobe, joining him in death. Poetry preserves another form of remembrance. The eighth-century Man'yōshū attributes poems to Ōtsu and his sister; in one of his, the speaker waits for a woman in mountain rain. Ōku's poems mark her brother's departure and death. These literary voices preserve relationships and mourning without establishing a love affair as the cause of his execution. [S02, S03]