many tons each. The entrance is by means of a gallery roofed with similar stones.” Several of these ancient sepulchral mounds have been examined during recent years, and their contents have furnished information of much antiquarian interest, though there is a complete absence of inscriptions. The reigns of the eight sovereigns who succeeded Jimmu were absolutely uneventful. Nothing is set down except the genealogy of each ruler, the place of his residence and his burial, his age and the date of his death. It was then the custom—and it remained so until the 8th century of the Christian era—to change the capital on the accession of each emperor; a habit which effectually prevented the growth of any great metropolis. The reign of the 10th emperor, Sūjin, lasted from 98 to 30 B.C. During his era the land was troubled by pestilence and the people broke out in rebellion; calamities which were supposed to be caused by the spirit of the ancient ruler of Izumo to avenge a want of consideration shown to his descendants by their supplanters. Divination—by a Chinese process—and visions revealed the source of trouble; rites of worship were performed in honour of the ancient ruler, his descendant being entrusted with the duty, and the pestilence ceased. We now hear for the first time of vigorous measures to quell the aboriginal savages, doubtless the Ainu. Four generals are sent out against them in different directions. But the expedition is interrupted by an armed attempt on the part of the emperor’s half-brother, who, utilizing the opportunity of the troops’ absence from Yamato, marches from Yamashiro at the head of a powerful army to win the crown for himself. In connexion with these incidents, curious evidence is furnished of the place then assigned to woman by the writers of the Chronicles. It is a girl who warns one of the emperor’s generals of the plot; it is the sovereign’s aunt who interprets the warning; and it is Ata, the wife of the rebellious prince, who leads the left wing of his army. Four other noteworthy facts are recorded of this reign: the taking of a census; the imposition of a tax on animals’ skins and game to be paid by men, and on textile fabrics by women; the building of boats for coastwise transport, and the digging of dikes and reservoirs for agricultural purposes. All these things rest solely on the testimony of annalists writing eight centuries later than the era they discuss and compiling their narrative mostly from tradition. Careful investigations have been made to ascertain whether the histories of China and Korea corroborate or contradict those of Japan. Without entering into detailed evidence, the inference may be at once stated that the dates given in Japanese early history are just 120 years too remote; an error very likely to occur when using the sexagenary cycle, which constituted the first method of reckoning time in Japan. But although this correction suffices to reconcile some contradictory features of Far-Eastern history, it does not constitute any explanation of the incredible longevity assigned by the Chronicles to several Japanese sovereigns, and the conclusion is that when a consecutive record of reigns came to be compiled in the 8th century, many lacunae were found which had to be filled up from the imagination of the compilers. With this parenthesis we may pass rapidly over the events of the next two centuries (29 B.C. to A.D. 200). They are remarkable for vigorous measures to subdue the aboriginal Ainu, who in the southern island of Kiūshiū are called Kuma-so (the names of two tribes) and sometimes earth-spiders (i.e. cave-dwellers), while in the north-eastern regions of the main island they are designated Yemishi. Expeditions are led against them in both regions by Prince Yamato-dake, a hero revered by all succeeding generations of Japanese as the type of valour and loyalty. Dying from the effects of hardship and exposure, but declaring with his last breath that loss of life was as nothing compared with the sorrow of seeing his father’s face no more, his spirit ascends to heaven as a white bird, and when his son, Chūai, comes to the throne, he causes cranes to be placed in the moat surrounding his palace in memory of his illustrious sire.
The sovereign had partly ceased to follow the example of Jimmu, who led his armies in person. The emperors did not, however, pass a sedentary life. They frequently made progresses throughout their dominions, and on these occasions a not uncommon incident was the addition of some local beauty to the Imperial harem. This licence had a far-reaching effect, since to provide for the sovereign’s numerous offspring—the emperor Keikō (71–130) had 80 children—no better way offered than to make grants of land, and thus were laid the foundations of a territorial nobility destined profoundly to influence the course of Japanese history. Woman continues to figure conspicuously in the story. The image of the sun goddess, enshrined in Ise (5 B.C.), is entrusted to the keeping of a princess, as are the mirror, sword and jewel inherited from the sun goddess; a woman (Tachibana) accompanies Prince Yamato-dake in his campaign against the Yemishi, and sacrifices her life to quell a tempest at sea; Saho, consort of Suinin, is the heroine of a most tragic tale in which the conflict between filial piety and conjugal loyalty leads to her self-destruction; and a woman is found ruling over a large district in Kiūshū when the Emperor Keikō is engaged in his campaign against the aborigines. The reign of Suinin saw the beginning of an art destined to assume extraordinary importance in Japan—the art of wrestling—and the first champion, Nomi no Sukune, is honoured for having suggested that clay figures should take the place of the human sacrifices hitherto offered at the sepulture of Imperial personages. The irrigation works commenced in the time of Sūjin were zealously continued under his two immediate successors, Suinin and Keikō. More than 800 ponds and channels are described as having been constructed under the former’s rule. We find evidence also that the sway of the throne had been by this time widely extended, for in 125 a governor-general of 15 provinces is nominated, and two years later, governors (miyakko) are appointed in every province and mayors (inaki) in every village. The number or names of these local divisions are not given, but it is explained that mountains and rivers were taken as boundaries of provinces, the limits of towns and villages being marked by roads running respectively east and west, north and south.
An incident is now reached which the Japanese count a landmark
in their history, though foreign critics are disposed to regard
it as apocryphal. It is the invasion of Korea by a
Japanese army under the command of the empress
Jingo, in 200. The emperor Chūai, having proceeded to
Invasion of Korea.
Kiūshiū for the purpose of conducting a campaign against the
Kuma-so, is there joined by the empress, who, at the inspiration
of a deity, seeks to divert the Imperial arms against Korea.
But the emperor refuses to believe in the existence of any such
country, and heaven punishes his incredulity with death at the
hands of the Kuma-so, according to one account; from the effects
of disease, according to another. The calamity is concealed;
the Kuma-so are subdued, and the empress, having collected a
fleet and raised an army, crosses to the state of Silla (in Korea),
where, at the spectacle of her overwhelming strength, the
Korean monarch submits without fighting, and swears that until
the sun rises in the west, until rivers run towards their sources,
and until pebbles ascend to the sky and become stars, he
will do homage and send tribute to Japan. His example is
followed by the kings of the two other states constituting the
Korean peninsula, and the warlike empress returns triumphant.
Many supernatural elements embellish the tale, but the features
which chiefly discredit it are that it abounds in anachronisms,
and that the event, despite its signal importance, is not mentioned
in either Chinese or Korean history. It is certain that China
then possessed in Korea territory administered by Chinese
governors. She must therefore have had cognisance of such an
invasion, had it occurred. Moreover, Korean history mentions
twenty-five raids made by the Japanese against Silla during the
first five centuries of the Christian era, but not one of them can
be indentified with Jingo’s alleged expedition. There can be no
doubt that the early Japanese were an aggressive, enterprising
people, and that their nearest over-sea neighbour suffered much
from their activity. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that
the Jingo tale contains a large germ of truth, and is at least an
echo of the relations that existed between Japan and Korea in the
3rd and 4th centuries. The records of the 69 years comprising
