the known history of Yamatai. After she died, her younger brother became ruler of the country for a short period before Yamatai disappears from historical records. Pronunciations Modern Japanese Yamato () descends from Old Japanese Yamatö or Yamato2, which has been associated with Yamatai. The latter umlaut or subscript diacritics distinguish two vocalic types within the proposed eight vowels of Nara period (710-794) Old Japanese (a, i, ï, u, e, ë, o, and ö, see Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai), which merged into the five modern vowels (a, i, u, e, and o). During the Kofun period (250-538) when kanji were first used in Japan, Yamatö was written with the ateji 倭 for Wa, the name given to "Japan" by Chinese writers using a character meaning "docile, submissive". During the Asuka period (538-710) when Japanese place names were standardized into two-character compounds, the spelling of Yamato was changed to , adding the prefix ("big; great"). Following the ca. 757 graphic substitution of ("peaceful") for ("docile"), the name Yamato was spelled ("great harmony"), using the Classical Chinese expression (pronounced in Middle Chinese as , as used in Yijing 1, tr. Wilhelm 1967:371: "each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony.") The early Japanese texts above give three spellings of Yamato in kanji: (Kojiki), (Nihon Shoki), and (Man'yōshū). The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki use Sino-Japanese on'yomi readings of ya "night" or ya or ja (an interrogative sentence-final particle in Chinese), ma "hemp", and to "rise; mount" or do "fly; gallop". In contrast, the Man'yōshū uses Japanese kun'yomi readings of yama "mountain" and ato "track; trace". As noted further above, Old Japanese pronunciation rules caused yama ato to contract to yamato. The early Chinese histories above give three transcriptions of Yamatai: (Wei Zhi), (Hou Han Shu), and (Sui Shu). The first syllable is consistently written with "a place name", which was used as a jiajie graphic-loan character for , an interrogative sentence-final particle, and for "evil; depraved". The second syllable is written with "horse" or "rub; friction". The third syllable of Yamatai is written in one variant with "faithful, committed", which is also financial form of , "one", and more commonly using "platform; terrace" (cf. Taiwan 臺灣) or "pile; heap". Concerning the transcriptional difference between the spelling in the Wei Zhi and the in the Hou Han Shu, Hong (1994:248-9) cites that was correct. Chen Shou,