Three Kingdoms and a Keyhole Tomb
Chapter 1
Story Time, Episode 2. Goes with Story of the World, Volume 2, chapter 9. About 4 minutes. Voices were made with ElevenLabs. The music box is played live by your browser. Turn Voices off to read the captions together at your own pace; each line still moves on by itself.
Where the facts come from
- Goes with Susan Wise Bauer, The Story of the World, Volume 2: The Middle Ages (Peace Hill Press), chapter 9. The story here is our own telling.
- The Yamato great kings, the clans, the keyhole tombs, and the sun-goddess legend: Delmer M. Brown, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 1: Ancient Japan (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
- Korea's three kingdoms, Goguryeo's mountain fortresses and horsemen, Baekje's ties to Japan, and writing reaching Japan through Korea: Michael J. Seth, A Concise History of Korea (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
- The Seven-Branched Sword, its inscription usually read as the year 369, and its home at Isonokami Shrine in Tenri, Nara: Brown, Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 1, above.
- How big the biggest keyhole tombs are (the Daisen tomb mound is about 486 m long): UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Mozu-Furuichi Kofun Group: Mounded Tombs of Ancient Japan (inscribed 2019).
- Haniwa figures of houses, horses, and warriors: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kofun Period (ca. 3rd century–538), Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.
- Scripture: Psalm 22:28, King James Version.
- Made with: hand-written JavaScript on an HTML canvas; voices from ElevenLabs, including real child-character voices for the kids; music played live by the browser's Web Audio.