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The prince, halting his forces,
returned to Mizugaki to take counsel, and the Emperor's aunt
interpreted the song to signify that his Majesty's half-brother,
Haniyasu, who governed the adjacent province of Yamato, was plotting
treason. Then all the troops having been recalled, preparations to
guard the capital were made, and soon afterwards, news came that
Haniyasu, at the head of an army, was advancing from the direction of
Yamashiro, while his wife, Ata, was leading another force from Osaka,
the plan being to unite the two armies for the attack on Yamato. The
Emperor's generals at once assumed the offensive. They moved first
against Princess Ata, killed her and exterminated her forces; after
which they dealt similarly with Haniyasu. This chapter of history
illustrates the important part taken by women in affairs of State at
that epoch, and incidentally confirms the fact that armour was worn
by men in battle.

The four Imperial generals were now able to resume their temporarily
interrupted campaigns. According to the Chronicles they completed the
tasks assigned to them and returned to the capital within six months.
But such chronology cannot be reconciled with facts. For it is
related that the generals sent northward by the western seaboard and
the eastern seaboard, respectively, came together at Aizu,* one
reaching that place via Hitachi, the other via Echigo. Thus, it would
result that Yamato armies at that remote epoch marched hundreds of
miles through country in the face of an enemy within a few months.
Further, to bring the aboriginal tribes into subjugation, an isolated
campaign would have been quite inadequate. Some kind of permanent
control was essential, and there is collateral evidence that the
descendants of the four princely generals, during many generations,
occupied the position of provincial magnates and exercised virtually
despotic sway within the localities under their jurisdiction. Thus in
the provinces of Omi, of Suruga, of Mutsu, of Iwashiro, of Iwaki, of
Echigo, of Etchu, of Echizen, of Bizen, of Bitchu, of Bingo, of
Harima, of Tamba, and elsewhere, there are found in later ages noble
families all tracing their descent to one or another of the Shido
shoguns despatched on the task of pacifying the country in the days
of the Emperor Sujin. The genealogies which fill pages of the Records
from the days of Jimmu downwards point clearly to the growth of a
powerful feudal aristocracy, for the younger sons born to successive
sovereigns bear, for the most part, names indicative of territorial
lordship; but it seems justifiable to conclude that the first great
impetus to that kind of decentralization was given by Sujin's
despatch of the Shido shoguns.

*Hence the term "Aizu," form, signifies "to meet."

AGRICULTURE AND TAXATION

The digging of reservoirs and tunnels for irrigating rice-fields
received unprecedented attention in the reign of this Emperor, and
mention is for the first time made of taxes--tributes of "bow-notches
and of finger-tips," in other words, the produce of the chase and the
products of the loom. A census was taken for taxation purposes, but
unhappily the results are nowhere recorded. The Court gave itself
some concern about maritime transport also. A rescript ordered that
ships should be built by every province, but nothing is stated as to
their dimensions or nature. In this rescript it is mentioned that
"the people of the coast not having ships, suffer grievously by land
transport." What they suffered may be inferred from a description in
the Chronicles where we read that at the building of the tomb of a
princess, "the people, standing close to each other, passed the
stones from hand to hand, and thus transported them from Osaka to
Yamato."

FOREIGN INTERCOURSE

Korea, when Japanese history is first explicitly concerned with it,
was peopled by a number of semi-independent tribes, and the part of
the peninsula lying southward of the Han River--that is to say,
southward of the present Seoul--comprised three kingdoms. Of these
Ma-Han occupied the whole of the western half of the peninsula along
the coast of the Yellow Sea; while Sin-Han and Pyong-Han formed the
eastern half, lying along the shore of the Sea of Japan. The three
were collectively spoken of as Sam-Han (the three Han). But Japan's
relations with the peninsula did not always involve these major
divisions. Her annals speak of Shiragi (or Sinra), Kara, Kudara, and
Koma. Shiragi and Kara were principalities carved respectively out of
the southeast and south of Pyong-Han. Thus, they lay nearest to
Japan, the Korea Strait alone intervening, and the Korea Strait was
almost bridged by islands. Kudara constituted the modern Seoul and
its vicinity; Koma, (called also Korai and in Korea, Kokuli), the
modern Pyong-yang and its district. These two places were rendered
specially accessible by the rivers Han and Tadong which flowed
through them to the Yellow Sea; but of course in this respect they
could not compare with Shiragi (Sinra) and Kara, of which latter
place the Japanese usually spoke as Mimana.

There can scarcely be any doubt that the Korean peninsula was largely
permeated with Chinese influences from a very early date, but the
processes which produced that result need not be detailed here. It
has been also shown above that, in the era prior to Jimmu,
indications are found of intercourse between Japan and Korea, and
even that Susanoo and his son held sway in Shiragi. But the first
direct reference made by Japanese annals to Korea occurs in the reign
of Sujin, 33 B.C. when an envoy from Kara arrived at the Mizugaki
Court, praying that a Japanese general might be sent to compose a
quarrel which had long raged between Kara and Shiragi, and to take
the former under Japan's protection. It appears that this envoy had
travelled by a very circuitous route. He originally made the port of
Anato (modern Nagato), but Prince Itsutsu, who ruled there, claimed
to be the sole monarch of Japan and refused to allow the envoy to
proceed, so that the latter had to travel north and enter Japan via
Kehi-no-ura (now Tsuruga.)

Incidentally this narrative corroborates a statement made in Chinese
history (compiled in the Later Han era, A.D. 25-220) to the effect
that many Japanese provinces claimed to be under hereditary rulers
who exercised sovereign rights. Such, doubtless, was the attitude
assumed by several of the Imperial descendants who had obtained
provincial estates. The Emperor Sujin received the envoy courteously
and seemed disposed to grant his request, but his Majesty's death (30
B.C.) intervened, and not until two years later was the envoy able to
return. His mission had proved abortive, but the Emperor Suinin,
Sujin's successor, gave him some red-silk fabrics to carry home and
conferred on his country the name Mimana, in memory of Sujin, whose
appellation during life had been Mimaki.

These details furnish an index to the relations that existed in that
era between the neighbouring states of the Far East. The special
interest of the incident lies, however, in the fact that it furnishes
the first opportunity of comparing Japanese history with Korean. The
latter has two claims to credence. The first is that it assigns no
incredible ages to the sovereigns whose reigns it records. According
to Japanese annals there were only seven accessions to the throne of
Yamato during the first four centuries of the Christian era.
According to Korean annals, the three peninsular principalities had
sixteen, seventeen, and sixteen accessions, respectively, in the same
interval. The second claim is that, during the same four centuries,
the histories of China and Korea agree in ten dates and differ in two
only.* On the whole, therefore, Korean annals deserve to be credited.
But whereas Japanese history represents warfare as existing between
Kara and Shiragi in 33 B.C., Korean history represents the conflict
as having broken out in A.D. 77. There is a difference of just 110
years, and the strong probability of accuracy is on the Korean side.

*For a masterly analysis of this subject see a paper on Early
Japanese History by Mr. W. G. Aston in Vol. XVI of the "Translations
of the Asiatic Society of Japan."

THE ELEVENTH SOVEREIGN, SUININ (29 B.C.--A.D. 70)

Suinin, second son of his predecessor, obtained the throne by a
process which frankly ignored the principle of primogeniture. For
Sujin, having an equal affection for his two sons, confessed himself
unable to choose which of them should be his successor and was
therefore guided by a comparison of their dreams, the result being
that the younger was declared Prince Imperial, and the elder became
duke of the provinces of Kamitsuke (now Kotsuke) and Shimotsuke.
Suinin, like all the monarchs of that age, had many consorts: nine
are catalogued in the Records and their offspring numbered sixteen,
many of whom received local titles and had estates conferred in the
provinces. In fact, this process of ramifying the Imperial family
went on continuously from reign to reign.

There are in the story of this sovereign some very pathetic elements.
Prince Saho, elder brother of the Empress, plotted to usurp the
throne. Having cajoled his sister into an admission that her brother
was dearer than her husband, he bade her prove it by killing the
Emperor in his sleep. But when an opportunity offered to perpetrate
the deed as the sovereign lay sleeping with her knees as pillow, her
heart melted, and her tears, falling on the Emperor's face, disturbed
his slumber. He sought the cause of her distress, and learning it,
sent a force to seize the rebel. Remorse drove the Empress to die
with Prince Saho. Carrying her little son, she entered the fort where
her brother with his followers had taken refuge. The Imperial troops
set fire to the fort--which is described as having been built with
rice-bags piled up--and the Empress emerged with the child in her
arms; but having thus provided for its safety, she fled again to the
fort and perished with her brother. This terrible scene appears to
have given the child such a shock that he lost the use of speech, and
the Records devote large space to describing the means employed for
the amusement of the child, the long chase and final capture of a
swan whose cry, as it flew overhead, had first moved the youth to
speech, and the cure ultimately effected by building a shrine for the
worship of the deity of Izumo, who, in a previous age, had been
compelled to abdicate the sovereignty of the country in favour of a
later descendant of the Sun goddess, and whose resentment was
thereafter often responsible for calamities overtaking the Court or
the people of Japan.

THE ISE SHRINE AND THE PRACTICE OF JUNSHI

Two events specially memorable in this reign were the transfer of the
shrine of the Sun goddess to Ise, where it has remained ever since,
and the abolition of the custom of junshi, or following in death.