JAPAN'S HISTORY LIBRARY

HISTORY OF JAPAN.

OLD YAMATO.(400 A.D. TO 550 A.D.)

IN the beginning of the fifth century AD the student of Japanese history ceases to be bewildered by the mirage of centenarian reigns, albeit still condemned to grope his way onward among the quicksands of uncertain and fluctuating legend. From this point the chronology of the Nihongi ceases to be the pretentious and audacious mockery of sober reason and common-sense which it has been since it introduced Jimmu upon the scene some eleven centuries before. To say that it now becomes trustworthy is quite another matter, however. All that can be admitted is that it is no longer wildly reckless; that its inherent inconsistencies are less gross, open, and palpable. But still they continue to stand in the record; all the more dangerous perhaps because they are not so glaringly conspicuous.

Temmu Tenno’s commissioners for “selecting” materials for a National History were evidently prudent men, well-advised of the advisability of making figures at least approximately plausible as they drew nearer to the age when certain things were getting to be set down in black on white. Indeed, if it were not for the existence of contemporary Korean records, and of antecedent, contemporary, and even subsequent Chinese histories, the guileless reader might very readily accept the last five-eighths of the Nihongi as thoroughly authentic. But when, for instance, we find the learned commissioners purloining the death-bed harangue of the Chinese Emperor Kaotsu, who died in 604 AD., and putting it, with very few and slight variations, into the mouth of the Japanese Emperor Yuryaku, who died (according to them) in 479, we may be excused if, having our doubts excited about the good faith and accuracy of the commissioners even in this later portion of their work, we refuse to take any of their assertions on mere trust. When in BC 88 a Japanese Emperor is made to say that “the distant savages, however, do not receive our calendar because they are yet unaccustomed to the civilising influences of our rule,” the thing is comparatively harmless, for, knowing that this is a Chinese way of speaking, that the Japanese knew nothing of the Chinese calendar till AD, and that the first official Japanese calendar was issued only in 690, we are easily enabled to dismiss the harangue as a mere “fake,” to use a somewhat vulgar, but thoroughly appropriate term. But such a “fake” as that of Yuryaku’s death-bed address is another thing. It is vastly more dangerous to the interests of veracity. The commissioners can have found absolutely nothing in their own national archives to serve as a basis for these “dying words.”

It is needless to observe that such purple patches in the Nihongi are something entirely different from the speeches that add vivacity and dramatic effect to the narrative set forth in Thucydides’ immortal pages. These speeches, albeit never spoken, were at least the composition of one of the greatest minds in Greece; of a great Greek writer and thinker penning a keenly critical record of contemporary Hellas. Thoroughly acquainted with all phases of the political thought and passions of his own time as Thucydides was, and, except perhaps in the sole case of Cleon, coldly impartial, his speeches are a fair and lucid exposition of what was really in the minds of the various factions and their leaders. The ideas they express are neither anachronistic nor alien. On the other hand, down to the beginning of the seventh century, the hold of Chinese ideas upon the Japanese was slight. It was only towards the middle of that century that such ideas began to carry all before them. In the course of a generation or two they were triumphantly dominant Now it was by the men of the second generation after the Great Reform of 645 that the Nihongi was compiled. These men were dazzled by the splendours of Chi­nese civilisation; by the magnificence of the Chinese Court, by the highly elaborated political and ethical systems of the Middle Kingdom, and by what they considered the polished elegance of Chinese literature. The effect of this situation was disastrous to the interests of sober veracity when Temmu’s commissioners addressed themselves to the task of “ selecting ” the old records and compiling a History of Japan from the origins down to their own times. In the first place, the trans formation since 645 had been so rapid and so complete that the new generation had as much difficulty in conceiving the state of things prevalent antecedent to that date as the young men of Meiji have in realising the conditions under which their Tokugawa grandfathers lived. In the next place they seem to have been somewhat ashamed of the rude and primitive sim­plicity of their ancestors. In the third place their History was an official History in the interests of the new order of things. And it was to rank not merely as a record, but as literature. This meant that it was to be based on Chinese models. If the commissioners had rested content with taking their literary models from China and their facts from Japan, there would not be any very great reason for modern students to complain. But they boldly pilfered stilted passages from standard Chinese Histories and put them into the mouths of their simple and unsophisticated ancestors, thus reminding us of Shakspeare’s Hector quoting Aristotle at the siege of Troy. Down to about 600 AD the language and ideas of the speeches and decrees in the Nihongi are at once alien and anachronistic. When not transferred body-bulk from the page of some Chinese author they are composed of a cento of turgid high-sounding Chinese sentences and phrases. And worse than this is the fact that the Nihongi historiographers purloin not a few of the incidents with which they embellish their pages from Chinese books. There is reason to believe that the Kojiki is not altogether free from all taint of this particular form of literary dishonesty.

However, with all its manifold shortcomings the Nihongi must continue to be our mainstay in any attempt to reconstruct ante-Taikwa (645) Japan. The Kojiki professedly brings the record down to 628, but from 488 onwards it is occupied with nothing but those genealogies so dreary to us, but so serviceable in the interests of the newly constituted aristocracy of office. Even from the death of Nintoku (399) its details become fragmentary and meagre. They are mainly valuable in serving to excite our suspicions about the correctness of some very plausible statements in the very much fuller and very circumstantial accounts in the Nihongi. Yet another source for a portion of the period is again supplied by contemporary Chinese notices of Japan. These extend from about 400 to 502 AD, and, after another silence of a century, from about 600 onwards.

It has been pointed out that while the accuracy of the Chinese chronology at this time has never been disputed, it is possible that errors may have crept in in the case of notices relating to a distant and little-known country. “On the other hand, it should be remembered that the matters noticed are chiefly embassies, of which an official record would naturally be kept. Internal evidence in favour of the accuracy of the Chinese account is not altogether wanting. In a memorial presented to one of the Wei Emperors by King Wu (Emperor of Japan), in 478, he styled himself Supreme Director of Military Matters in the Seven Countries of Wa, Pakche, Si Ila, Mimana, Kara, Chinhan, and Bohan, General-in-Chief for the Pacification of the East, and King of Wa, in which titles he was confirmed by China. His four predecessors had requested Imperial sanction for somewhat similar titles. The truth of this statement is attested by the fact already noticed that Japan during the fifth century exercised a powerful influence in the Korean peninsula, and it derives further confirmation from the use of the word Mimana, which, as far as we know, was an exclusively Japanese name for one of the minor Korean kingdoms.”

Here, then, in these brief Chinese notices we have seemingly fairly firm ground to stand upon, chronologically speaking. These references may not be enough to enable us to reconcile some of the divergent and discrepant details of the Nihongi and the Kojiki, but they at least impel us to look into the chronology and the accounts of the Japanese historiographers more searchingly than we might otherwise have done.

Now, even so late as 531 the Nihongi chronology continues to present inherent inconsistencies. Tn that year the Emperor Keitai dies at the age of 82. On the very day of his death he nominates his eldest son his successor. Yet the Nihongi makes 534 the first year of Ankan Tenno (Keitai’s successor). On the other hand the Kojiki makes him die the father of a family of nineteen children at the early age of 43. Both cannot be right, and both are possibly wrong. The point is, that inas­much as Japanese chronology even as late as 530 is not accurate, it is probable that it is still more untrustworthy for the preceding century. During this century Chinese chronology, on the other hand, is fortified with very strong credentials. Now, for this century we arrive at the following list of Japanese monarchs from Chinese sources:—

From about 400 to after 425.... Tsan (1)

From after 425 to before 443.... Chen (2)

From before 443 to before 462.... Tai (3)

From before 462 to before 478.... Hing (4)

From before 478 to after 502.... Wu (5)

Of this quintette of rulers the first three were brothers, the fourth and fifth were also brothers, elder and younger sons of the third.

Next let us go through the drudgery of examining the subjoined genealogical table of the earliest of the non-legendary sovereigns of Japan. (The last long-lived monarch, Nintoku, who reigned from 312-399 ad, is counted the sixteenth Emperor of Yamato.)

(16) Nintoku (312-399)

(17) Richu (400-405)

Ichinohe Oshiiwa

(18)Hansho (406-411)

Okusaka

(19) Ingyo (412-453)

(20)  Anko (454-456)

(21) Yuryaku (457-479)

(22) Seinei (480-484)

(23) Kenzo (485-487)

(24) Nlnken (488-498)

(25) Buretsu (499-506)

Here we have not five, but nine sovereigns. As in the Chinese records, we here find that the first three of these were brothers, and the next two were also brothers, both being sons of the third. To the last four there is nothing corresponding in the Chinese contemporary record, where during the period occupied by their reigns in the Nihongi we find King Wu exercising sway in Japan. King Wu, the younger of the last two brothers on the list, is evidently Yuryaku Tenno, whom the Kojiki makes a mere youth at the time of his brother’s assassination, and to whom it assigns an age of 124 years at his death. This is of course entirely against probability, but on the other hand it may lead us to doubt whether he died so early as 479, as the Nihongi asserts he did. Then Buretsu (or Muretsu) Tenno, who is represented as reigning from 499 to 506, was, according to the accepted chronology, no more than eighteen years old at the time of his death. There is reason to believe that Yuryaku and Buretsu were one and the same individual. As regards the three intervening sovereigns it may be suspected that they are either figments created out of certain characters and incidents in old Chinese history, or that they were aspirants to the throne who had been powerful enough to displace Yuryaku (or Buretsu) for a time. What lends a certain measure of plausibility, if not of probability, to this latter hypothesis is the fact that from the very beginning of semi-authentic history we find the succession to the throne of Yamato a matter of fierce and deadly contention. The elder brother of Nintoku, the last legendary Emperor, is represented as perishing in an abortive attempt to possess himself of the Empire. Then the life of Nintoku's eldest son and successor, Richu, was attempted by the second of Nintoku’s five sons, Prince Nakatsu, who proved a dangerous competitor.

Richu’s own two sons and his daughter Ihitoyo were passed over when his brother Hansho became Emperor. On the death of the latter, his brother (and Richu’s brother) was made Emperor to the exclusion of Hansho’s son and Richu’s children alike. On this occasion the succession question was plainly decided by the Ministers, by whom are meant the heads of certain of the great clans, who are presently to become so prominent in the annals of Yamato. The history of this Emperor (Ingyo) is given at considerable length and with considerable detail by the Nihongi,—only it is to be noted that for eighteen years of his reign, from 435 to 453, there is a complete lacuna. And as regards the chronology of the incident assigned to 434-5 the Nihongi flagrantly contradicts itself. This incident of 434-5 is interesting for several reasons. The Emperor’s eldest son, Prince Karu, had been designated by him as his successor. But it was discovered that he had had a liaison with his own full-blood sister, the Princess Karu. Marriages between half­brothers and half-sisters on the father’s side continued to be common down to 645, and even later, while the nuptials of uncles and nieces were not unusual even so late as the Tokugawa age. But this liaison between brother and sister of full blood seems to have revolted the moral sense of the time. Here let us look at the language of the two old records. The Kojiki says: “After the decease of the Heavenly Sovereign (Ingyo) it was settled that Prince Karu of Ki-nashi should rule the Sun's succession. But in the interval before his accession he debauched his younger sister, the Great Lady of Karu. Therefore all the officials and likewise all the people of the Empire turned against the heir apparent, Karu, and towards the august child Anaho ... so Prince Karu was banished to the hot waters of Iyo (in Shikoku). So being banished to restrain her love the Princess Karu went after him. Having thus sung they (the Prince and Princess Karu) killed themselves.” According to the Nihonyi, “the Emperor Ingyo died in the 42nd year of his reign (453). At this time, the heir apparent was guilty of a barbarous outrage in debauching a woman. The nation censured him, and the Ministers would not follow him, but all without exception gave their allegiance to the Imperial Prince Anaho. [This means that they set aside the nomination of his successor by the late Emperor, and decided the succession question themselves.] Hereupon the heir apparent wished to attack the Imperial Prince Anaho, and to that end secretly got ready an army. The Imperial Prince Anaho also raised a force, and prepared to give battle.” As the result of all this “ the heir-apparent died by his own hand in the house of Ohomahe no Sukune.”

Now at this time is plainly between the 1st and the 10th month of 453. But three or four pages before we have a full and circumstantial account of the liaison under the years 434 and 435! And similar instances of playing fast and loose with the realities of things, while keeping up the semblance of a pedantic accuracy in the matter of months and days, are not rare in the Nihonyi in this, and even in the following century.

This Prince Anaho succeeded to the throne, and, appearing as Hing in the contemporary Chinese records, is known in Japanese history as Anko Tenno (454 -456). Owing to the covetousness of an intriguing Minister who wished to appropriate a certain jewel headdress, he was led to assassinate his grand­uncle Okusaka, the son of Nintoku Tenno. He thereupon made Okusaka’s wife his concubine; and a year afterwards he was assassinated by Okusaka’s son, a child of seven years!

“ Then,” says the Kojiki, ‘Prince Oho-hatsuse (i.e. Yuryaku Tenno), who at that time (456) was a lad, was forthwith grieved and furious on hearing of this event and went forth to his elder brother King Kuro-hiko and said:—‘They have slain the Heavenly Sovereign. What shall be done?’ But Kuro-hiko was not startled, and was of unconcerned heart. Thereupon Prince Oho-hatsuse (Yuryaku) reviled his elder brother, saying: ‘For one thing it being the Heavenly Sovereign, for another thing it being thy brother, how is thy heart without concern? What! not startled, but unconcerned on hearing that they have slain thy elder brother!’ and forthwith he clutched him by the collar, dragged him out, drew his sword, and slew him. Again, going to his elder brother King Shiro-hiko, he told him the circumstances as before. The un­concernedness was like King Kuro-hiko’s. So Oho-hatsuse (Yuryaku) forthwith clutched him by the collar, pulled him along, and dug a pit on reaching Woharida, and buried him as he stood, so that by the time he had been buried up to the loins, both his eyes burst out and he died.”

The Nihongi recounts all this somewhat differently and in a wav much less favourable to the credit of the very masterful and mettlesome Yuryaku. It will be noted that he was the youngest of five brothers, that the eldest had perished in a. contest for the succession, that the second had been assassinated. and that the surviving two having been thus summarily disposed of, Yuryaku naturally became sovereign. However, even so his title was not assured, if we are to follow the Nihongi. “Yuryaku resented the Emperor Anaho’s having formerly wished to transfer the kingdom to the Imperial Prince Tchinohe no Oshiha, and to commit the succession de­finitively to his charge.” This Prince Ichinohe was the son of the seventeenth Emperor (Richu Tenno,) and consequently the uncle of both Anaho and Yuryaku. The latter now in­veigled him to a solitary hunting-trip, and in the course of it shot him down, and, says the Kojiki, forthwith moreover cut his body (to pieces), put (them) into a horse’s manger and buried them level with the earth. There was still one son of RichuTenno surviving, and his turn came presently.

Yuryaku so far is more of a Richard III than of a Nero. But the reign thus begun in blood continued to be a record of ferocities. A Pakche lady had been sent over as an Imperial concubine, but she had an intrigue with one of the courtiers. Yuryaku “was greatly enraged, and had the four limbs of the woman stretched on a tree. The tree was placed over a cup­board, which was set on fire and she was burned to death.” It is not strange to learn that Pakche refused to supply Yuryaku with any more Imperial concubines after that. In 469 we read that the carpenter Mane of the Wina Be planed timber with an axe, using a stone as a ruler. All day long he planed, and never spoiled the edge by mistake. The Emperor visited the place, and, wondering, asked of him, saying: ‘Dost thou never make a mistake and strike the stone?’ Mane answered and said: ‘I never make a mistake!’ Then the Emperor called together the Uneme (Court ladies) and made them strip off their clothing and wrestle in open view with only their waist­cloths on. Hereupon Mane ceased for a while, and looked up at them, and then went on with his planning. But unawares he made a slip of the baud and spoilt the edge of his tool. The Emperor accordingly rebuked him, saving: ‘Where does this fellow come from, that without respect to Us, he gives such heedless answers with unchastened heart? ’ So he handed him over to the Mononobe to be executed on the Moor.” A little before this, a noble on duty in the Palace was ill-advised enough to speak of his wife to his comrades in the strain of King Candaules. His words reached the Emperor’s ears, and Tasa, the noble in question, was promptly dispatched to fight in Korea, even as Uriah was sent to Kabbah and Otho to Spain, while Yuryaku appropriated his spouse. Withal, however, Yuryaku was not so much sensual as ferocious. People were punished for the most trivial offences, and the Emperor now and then summarily cut down offenders with his own hand. Says the Nihongi: ‘‘The Emperor, taking his heart for guide, wrongfully slew many men. The Empire censured him, and called him ‘the greatly wicked Emperor.’ The only persons who loved him were Awo Musa no Saguri of the Scribes’ Company and Hakatoko, employer of the people of Hinokuma.”

However, even from the Nihongi’s own account, it is clear that Yuryaku was neither an entire stranger to pity, nor al­together devoid of generous impulses, and his Imperial Majesty certainly had a sense of humour. Possibly the Mane incident was merely a rather indecent practical joke, for the order for the carpenter’s execution was countermanded and he survived to celebrate the episode in verse.

Now, let us cast a glance at what we may well suspect to be not so much Yuryaku’s double, as a continuation of Yuryaku himself. Muretsu or Buretsu, son of Yuryaku’s cousin Ninken, according to the accepted chronology, dies at the age of eighteen in 506 after a reign of eight years. Thus when he succeeded in 499 he must have been a child of ten. Yet the Nihongi begins its account of him thus: “When he grew to manhood he was fond of criminal law, and was well versed in the statutes. He would remain in court till the sun went down, so that hidden wrong was surely penetrated. In deciding cases he attained to the facts. But he worked much evil and accomplished no good thing. He never omitted to witness in person cruel punishments of all kinds, and the people of the whole land were all in terror of him.”

With respect to this, it is perhaps superfluous to remark that Buretsu never attained to manhood, that the Japanese had no courts of law at this time, and that to speak of statutes here is absurd. What is more to the point is to draw attention to the fact that from “When” down to “facts” has been purloined verbatim from the history of that Chinese Emperor, Ming-ti, who introduced Buddhism into China in the time of Nero (65 ad).

Some of the earliest subsequent notices are these:—“500 ad, 9th month.—The Emperor (aetat 11) ripped up the belly of a pregnant woman and inspected the pregnant womb. 501, 10th month.—He plucked out men’s nails and made them dig yams. 503, 6th month.—The Emperor made men lie down on their faces in the sluice of a dam and caused them to be washed away; with a three-bladed lance he stabbed them. In this he took delight. 505, 2nd month.—He made men climb up trees and then shot them down with a bow, upon which he laughed.”

The atrocities of the next year, 506, constrain the Western modern translator to take refuge in Latin. “And these things he took a pleasure in. At this time he dug a pond and made a park which he filled with birds and beasts. He was fond of hunting, and of racing dogs and trying horses. He went out and in at all times, taking no care to avoid storms and torrents of rain. Being warmly clad himself, he forgot that the people were starving from cold; eating dainty food, he forgot that the Empire was famishing. He gave great encouragement to dwarfs and performers, making them execute riotous music. He prepared strange diversions, and gave licence to lewd voices. Night and day he constantly indulged in wine in the company of the women of the Palace. His cushions were of brocade, and many of bis garments were of damask and fine white silk.”

At this point it may be well to advert to a matter which a careful collation of the Nihongi with the Kojiki discloses. In the Age of the Gods the Nihongi deals with fewer incidents than the Kojiki. But on the other hand it frequently gives us “other versions” of the same incident—sometimes as many as six, seven, or eight. At the beginning of the so-called historical portion of the Nihongi this practice does not indeed cease altogether, but it becomes much less common. Instead of giving “other versions” of the same incident, it now begins to convert these different versions into distinct and different incidents and to assign them widely separated positions in the record. Its compilers seem to have been forced to this by the exigencies of filling up the gaps in that spurious chronology they had adopted, which, as has been said, has not unfairly been branded as “one of the greatest literary frauds ever perpetrated.” And they go still farther. They separate the various details of one episode, construct two separate incidents out of these, and assign these also to widely separated positions in the record. And in addition to all this they boldly pilfer incidents from Chinese histories, and record them as events in the history of Japan.

The bearing of this consideration upon the case immediately before us is obvious. The incidents of Muretsu’s reign recall certain of those of Yuryaku’s,—both sovereigns have certain points of character in common. And in the Nihongi record of both we have passages audaciously pilfered from Chinese histories. Nor is this all,—the incidents not only of Yuryaku’s and Muretsu’s reigns, but those of the intervening Emperors, Ninken and Kenzo, are reminiscent of incidents in Chinese legendary history (2100 bc) and of the equally legendary Chinese Emperors Ki-eh, Chau-sin, and Tan-ki. From the hints we get from contemporary Chinese and Korean annals we should judge that this Yuryaku or Buretsu or King Wu was really a strong and masterful, albeit fierce and ferocious ruler, who has been as unfairly dealt with by legend and the Nihonyi writers as Macbeth has been by Wyntoun, Hector Boece, Holinshed, and Shakespeare.

Now, as regards the three intervening sovereigns between Yuryaku and Muretsu, the Kojiki assigns a single son to the former, who became the Emperor Seinei. “This Heavenly Sovereign had no Empress and likewise no august children. So after the Heavenly Sovereign’s decease there was no King to rule the Empire. Therefore on inquiry being made (for a King) who should rule the Sun’s succession the Princess Ihi toyo (was found to be) residing in Kadzuraki.” On the other hand the Nihonyi says Yuryaku had three sons, and makes the two younger ones perish in a civil war that preceded Seinei’s succession. On Seinei’s death the Empire was administered by the Princess Ihi-toyo for about ten months, although she is not reckoned among the sovereigns of Japan. When this Princess Ihi-tovo’s brother Ichinohe was assassinated by Yuryaku in 457 his two children fled to Harima, where they hid their persons and worked as grooms and cowherds for a rich land-owner there. Just at this juncture they were discovered by a Government official on circuit, who sent a courier off with the intelligence. “Thereupon their aunt, Queen Ihi-toyo, delighted to hear (the news), made them come up to the palace.” After “yielding the Empire” to each other for some months—a contest in fraternal affection reminiscent of the episode of Nintoku Tenob and his younger brother 170 years before,—the younger brother at last consents to ascend the throne. When he dies childless in 488 he is succeeded by the elder, who reigns ten years, and dies in 498, leaving five daughters and two sons, the elder of whom becomes Muretsu, that precocious monster of depravity.

Now, in certain early lists of sovereigns compiled after the date of the Nihongi, Yuryaku’s son Seinei does not appear. He is dropped entirely. Then the whole history of this time smacks of old Chinese history. What is possible is that one of the numerous revolts against Yuryaku which we hear of in the Nihongi had been temporarily successful, and that Yuryaku had in turn succeeded in crushing his opponents in his own forcible way. At all events, on the death of Muretsu, Yuryaku’s double,” we find the line of Nintoku Tenno extinct.

Thus the succession question was a perplexing one for the Ministers who now had to deal with it. The accounts we have of what followed are perhaps significant of “King Wu’s” masterful ways, for the possible claimants to the throne appear to have felt that the mere fact of being of Imperial stock made them marked men, and so had gone into hiding in remote country districts. “The Oho-muraji, Ohotomo no Kanamura, counselled, saying : ‘At this moment there is no successor to the throne. Where shall the Empire bestow its allegiance? From ancient times even until now this has been a cause of disaster. Now there is in Tamba Prince Yamato-hiko, a descendant of the Emperor Chuai (192-200 ad) in the fifth generation. Let us make the experiment of preparing an armed force to surround his carriage as a guard, and sending to meet him, establish him as our sovereign? The Oho-omi and Oho-muraji all agreed and sent to meet him in the manner proposed. Upon this, Prince Yamato-hiko, viewing from a distance the troops which were sent to meet him, was alarmed and changed countenance. Accordingly he took refuge in a mountain-valley, and no one could learn whither he had gone”.

The Ministers then bethought them of Prince Wohodo, fifth in descent from the fifteenth legendary Emperor Ojin, who was then living in obscurity at Mikuni in Echizen. “Omi and Muraji were sent with emblems of rank and provided with a palanquin of State to fetch him. The troops to form his guard arrived suddenly in awe-inspiring array, clearing the way before him. Upon this, the Prince Wohodo remained calm and self-possessed, seated on a chair, with his retainers in order by him, just as if he already occupied the Imperial throne. The envoys, therefore, hearing the emblems of rank, with respect and reverence bowed their hearts and committed to him the Imperial authority, asking permission to devote to him their loyal service. In the Emperor’s mind, however, doubts still remained, and for a good while he did not consent Just then he chanced to learn that Arako Kawachi no Muma-kahi no Obito had sent a messenger secretly to inform him minutely of the real intentions of the Ministers in sending to escort him. After a delay of two days and three nights, he at length set out. Then he exclaimed, admiringly: Well done, Mumakahi no Obito! Had it not been for the information given by thy messenger, I ran a great risk of being made a laughing-stock to the Empire!’ ”

At this point it may be well to examine how the succession question, which was here plainly decided by the Ministers, was dealt with on future occasions. Henceforth it never proved such a perplexing problem as it did at this juncture when the line of Nintoku Tenno had become extinct. The new Emperor (507-531) had nineteen children, and three of these came to occupy the throne in succession. The family of the third of these, Kimmei Tenno (540-571), was still larger, and of his twenty-five children four became sovereigns of Japan. The genealogical table for this period stands thus

(27) Ankan (534-5)

(28) Senkwa (536-40)

(29) Kimmei (540-571)

(30) Bidatsu (572-586)

(31) Yomei (587-588)

Shotoku Taishi

(32) Sujuno (588-593)

Shotoku Taishi (593-621)

Suiko Empress (593-628)

Ankan (27) was nominated as his successor by Keitai Tenno on the day of his death in 531. The strange thing is that Ankan’s reign does not begin until 534. On his death in 535 without children, “the Ministers in a body delivered up the sword and mirror to Ankan’s next (full) brother, “and made him assume the Imperial dignity” (Senkwa, 536-540). Of the next Emperor, Kimmei (540-571), we are merely told that he was the Emperor Keitai’s (507-531) rightful heir. Kimmei in his lifetime designated his second son Bidatsu (572-586) as his successor. This Emperor Bidatsu had seventeen children, but none of these came to the throne. Bidatsu was the son of a daughter of Senkwa Tenno (536-539), and he was married to his own half-sister, who afterwards came to rule in her own right as the Empress Suiko (593-628). Now, this lady was one of the thirteen children the Emperor Kimmei had by the daughter of his Prime Minister, Soga no Iname. By another Soga lady, variously given as the aunt or half-sister of Suiko’s mother, he had five more, one of whom plays a somewhat prominent part in the history of the time as the Prince Anahobe. This Prince’s sister, the Princess Anahobe, became the chief consort of Bidatsu’s half-brother and successor, the Emperor Yomei (587-588), who was the full-brother of Bidatsu’s Empress, later known as the Empress Suiko. On Yomei’s death, Sujun (588 -593) succeeded, and he was a full brother of Yomei Tenno’s Empress, and thus a scion of the House of Soga. However, on becoming Emperor he did not take a Soga lady as consort, but went to the great rival house of Ohotomo for one. It, may not have been this step which cost him his life, but the fact remains that he was presently assassinated by an emissary of the Prime Minister, Soga no Mumako. Thereupon Bidatsu’s Empress, whose mother was a Soga, was established as Empress in her own right, while the Prince Shotoku was nominated Heir Prince. A look into his genealogical tree will serve to show that he had more Soga blood in his veins than anything else. In truth it was the Sogas who now ruled Yamato, for behind the sovereign and all the Imperial Princes and Princesses of Soga extraction stood the great Soga clan, or rather clans, with their all-powerful chieftains.

Although it is only with the appointment of Soga Iname to the office of Oho-omi or Great Minister in 536 that the Soga family comes into prominence, it was yet at once of hoary antiquity and Imperial descent, tracing its lineage back to the eighth legendary Emperor, Kogen Tenno (214-157 BC). A grandson of that sovereign was that Japanese Methusaleh, Takeuchi no Sukune, who served five successive sovereigns as Prime Minister and died in the reign of Nintoku, after 362 AD, aged at least 270 years. From him were descended several of the great clans of Yamato, the Rose, the Heguri, the Ki, and, greatest of all,—the Soga. The real founder of the greatness of the family was that Iname who began the stubborn fight to establish Buddhism in Japan. After a thirty-four years’ tenure of office he died in 570, and on the accession of Bidatsu Tenno in 572, Iname’s son, Mumako, succeeded to his father’s post, and held it for more than half-a-century, down to 626. What Iname had vainly striven for Mumako accomplished. At the time of his death there were forty-six Buddhist temples, with 816 priests and 569 nuns in Yamato, while on the occasion of his illness in. 614, a thousand persons, men and women, had entered religion for his sake. It was this Mumako who was the Great King-Maker in old Yamato. His son Emishi (626- 645) and his grandson Iruka were perhaps even more powerful in their time, but theirs was the pride that goes before a fall. It was against them that the Great Revolution of 645 was primarily directed. The coup d’état began with the assassination of Iruka at a solemn court function: then followed the execution of his father, and the power of the seemingly omni­potent Soga was broken for ever. And with the fall of the Soga, the knell of old Yamato was rung, and what may now be called “Old Japan” was born. The real primeval Yamato institutions were now swept away, the administration and nearly everything else got Sinicised, and two generations later we have to deal with Sinicised official (so-called) historians struggling not altogether ineffectually to execute their mandate to impress their contemporaries and succeeding ages with the belief that the political theories of 720 ad had been those of the Land of the Gods from the beginning of (un)-recorded time!

This has a not unimportant bearing upon very recent Japanese history. While foreign writers are mistaken in asserting that the Meiji statesmen went to France or to any other country in Europe for their administrative models, Japanese publicists are equally at fault when they assure us that the Reform of Meiji was merely a reversion to the original state of things prevalent in these islands. Hirata, the great Shintoist of the last century, approximates more closely to the truth when he maintains that the Tokugawa regime was in a measure a replica of the organisation that prevailed in old Yamato previous to the Revolution of Taikwa (645 ad). What the men of Meiji did really in a measure revert to was the Sinicised Japan of 645 and the subsequent century or two. But the political theories that then prevailed had very little that was autochthonous in them. In short, it is not too much to say that these theories were in many respects at diametrical variance with the old Yamato ideas. The authors of the Nihongi strive might and main to make out that such theories had really been consonant with primeval practice. But they only succeed in stultifying themselves to anyone who cares to devote time and pains to collating their divergent statements, and to an investigation of their real “sources.” For instance, in 534, an Emperor makes his Minister use the following words to a subject who had given offence: “Of the entire surface of the soil there is no part which is not an Imperial grant in fee; under the wide Heaven there is no place which is not Imperial territory. The previous Emperors therefore established an illustrious designation and handed down a vast fame; in magnanimity they were a match for Heaven and Earth; in glory they resembled the Sun and Moon. They rode afar and dispensed their mollifying influence to a distance; in breadth it extended beyond the bounds of the capital and cast a bright reflection throughout the boundaries of the land, pervading everywhere without a limit. Above they were the crown of the nine heavens; they passed abroad through all the eight points of the compass; they declared their efficiency by the framing of ceremonial observances; they instituted music, thereby manifesting order. The resulting happiness was truly complete; theirs was gladness which tallied with that of past years.”

Now, all this is not only make-believe, but it is absurd make-believe. The rude and unlettered district chief to whom this language is addressed could no more have understood it than he could contemporary Byzantine Greek, while the Minister himself could not possibly have used it. Forty years later (572) we find Emperor, Prime Minister, and the official clerks all equally unable to read a dispatch (in Chinese) from the King of Kogurvu in Northern Korea. As the above speech is not only Chinese, but real Chinaman’s Chinese, the absurdity of the thing should be evident. In truth, with the exception of the first sentence, the whole passage is stolen from the records of the Liang Dynasty (502-554), with which the Japan­ese did not make acquaintance until after their resumption of intercourse with China shortly before the close of the sixth century. Such a theory of eminent domain was indeed put forward by implication in Shotoku Taishi’s famous Laws of 604, but it was only after 645 a.d. that it actually became an article in the constitutional doctrine of Japan.

Yet what prevailed in ante-Taikwa Japan can hardly be described as a feudal system. The nearest analogy to the organisation of old Japan is to be found in the west of contemporary Europe,—among the Celtic tribes or clans of Gaul, of Wales, and of Ireland. The term “clan” is generally applied to the fiefs of the Tokugawa regime. But these fiefs were not clans,—they were as much fiefs as those of our feudal system were,—characterised by tenure of land by military service, sub infeudation, and an element of contract, while there was no doctrine of a descent of the community from a common ancestor. In dealing with ancient Japan, on the other hand, the term “clan” is by no means inappropriate. The chief clan was the Imperial one—the descendants of the Heavenly Grandchild. Its head had full and direct power over all its members, but as regards the members of the other clans, he could exercise authority over them through their respective heads only. Possessed of broader acres and with a greater number of immediate personal dependents than his fellow-chieftains, the Great Yamato Chief was probably gradually elevated from the position of a mere primus inter pares by the exercise of three prerogatives. As the ancestral gods of his house developed into the gods of the nation at large his functions as High Priest of a clan widened into those of the High Priest of the whole people, and this presently enabled him to call upon the heads of the houses for contributions to defray the expenses of the due maintenance of the national cult. Next towards foreign Powers (by which the Korean States are chiefly meant) he became the representative of Yamato, charged with the power of declaring war and making peace and of speaking in its name with authority generally. It lay with him to receive embassies from and to dispatch envoys to the oversea Courts. Hence his right to call upon the clans for military contingents in cases of complications. In the third place he became the judge in cases of disputed successions to the headships of Uji (clans), and in the fifth century we find him creating, dissolving, and degrading Uji in the clear light of history. In the sixth century we see the Emperors vigorously engaged in extending their power; and their chief method of doing so is by bringing more land under direct Imperial possession and. control. Many instances in the Nihongi go to support Dr. Florenz in his contention that the heads of clans had something more than a mere superiority over their lands; that in fact they were the absolute owners of them. Numerous incidents of real practical life seem effectually to negative the assumption that the doctrine, “Under the wide Heavens there is no place that is not Imperial territory,” then had currency in Yamato. On the other hand, we have two emphatic declarations about the non-alienability of certain estates which belonged to the Emperor ex officio. The true statement of the case seems to be something like this :—In pre-Taikwa Japan the ownership of the soil of the whole Empire was vested in the sovereign neither practically nor theoretically. On the other hand, the sovereign was one of the greatest, if not by far the greatest, landholder in Japan, and furthermore he was usually actively engaged in an endeavour to extend his real powers by adding to his acres.

Now, a succession of strong and able sovereigns of the calibre of the first three Norman kings, of Henry II, and of Edward I in England, of James I and of James II in Scotland, of Philip IV and of Louis XI in France, might very well have succeeded in crushing all the great houses of Yamato by this very simple means. But, chiefly on account of the system of virtual polygamy that then prevailed in Japan, the titular sovereigns tended to become little more than pawns in the great contest for power then raging between several great (nominally) subject houses.

At the beginning of the fifth century we meet with mention of the Ministers,—of the Great Omi and the Great Muraji,—and from Yuryaku (457-479) onwards we hear of the appointment of a Great Omi and of Great Muraji (sometimes one, sometimes two) at the beginning of each succeeding reign. Mr. Aston ventures the supposition that the Great Omi was the chief civil, and the Great Muraji the chief military official. Nothing in the records seems to negative Dr. Florenz’s hypothesis—or rather categorical assertion—that the Great Omi- was the chief of the Omi, and that the Omi were nobles who were of Imperial descent—who, in other words, could trace their lineage from the Heavenly Grandchild, and consequently from the Sun-goddess. At one time we find a Heguri, at another a Tsubura, and finally, the Soga acting as Great Omi. All these families were of remote Imperial descent. The Muraji were all noble houses, but they were not of Imperial stock. They fell into two categories, those descended from Heavenly Deities,—by which is meant those who traced their lineage back to the companions of the Heavenly Grandchild who alighted with him on the Peak of Takachiho in the Land of So (Kumaso),—and the progeny of Earthly Deities, that is, of the gods and chieftains whom Jimmu found domiciled in Yamato at the time of his conquest of it. In other words, the Muraji were nobles partly of Kyushu and partly of Idzumo extraction. To the former belonged the great houses of Naka-tomi (later the Fujiwara) and Ohotomo, to the latter those of Miwa and Mononobe. The Kyushu Muraji were generally represented by the Great Muraji Ohotomo, the Idzumo by the Great Muraji Mononobe. Both of these great clans paid special attention to military matters, and so far Mr. Aston’s assertion is perfectly correct.

Omi and Muraji alike were generally supposed to appear at times, if not to live permanently, in the capital—which at this time, by the way, changed at least once, and sometimes oftener, In every reign. Here, however, they did not take instructions directly from the sovereign,—his communications to them were conveyed through the medium of the Great Omi or the Great Muraji. A Great Omi, like Soga, thus occupied a rather peculiar position, for he exercised a sort of control over the general body of the Omi, and at the same time he was the Soga, inasmuch as he was at the head not only of his own clan proper, but of the chiefs of the numerous cadet Omi houses into which, in course of time, it had ramified. The heads of these cadet houses were absolute masters of their own lands, and exercised absolute and untrammelled authority over their own tribes­men, clients, and slaves. With these the Great Omi could not interfere directly; but he could call upon the chiefs of the cadet houses to join, for example, in the work of erecting a mausoleum for his own father, the former Great Omi and head of the Soga clan in the widest sense of the term,—for the Soga In short. Although generally resident in the capital, these Omi and Muraji were great landholders with vast estates in the country; several of them with many estates, as widely separated as were those of the barons of our first Norman king. Only it is to be noted that on these estates it was not so much the feudal as the old Celtic tribal tie that was the bond of connection between lord or chief and dependent.

However, the estates of the Emperor, of the Omi, and of the Muraji formed only a portion, albeit perhaps the major portion, of the total superficies of what then constituted the so-called Empire of Yamato. A very considerable part of the soil was occupied by the Kunimiyakko, or Kuni Miyatsuko, or Kuni­tsuko, for all three terms are various forms of the same word, which Professor Chamberlain translates as “Country-Ruler.” Of these, shortly before the Great Revolution of 645 there were about 140, great and small; for Country Ruler (Kunitsuko) was used in two senses. In the first place it was a generic term for local independent magnates—Kimi, Wake, Kunitsuko, Agata, Tnaki—of various origins and of widely dissimilar re­sources, and secondly it was sometimes specifically employed to denote the more limited cases among those that actually ruled a “country” in contradistinction to a mere district or perhaps a few villages. Six children of the Emperor Ojin are said to have been provided with as many appanages in Kibi (Bizen, Bitchu, and Bingo), and the sons of other sovereigns who did not come to the throne were usually provided with estates in various parts of the country. In connection with the accession of Keitai (507) we meet with two such instances. For the first five or six generations these were known as Kimi or Wake; after that they usually became merged in the general body of Kuni no Miyakko or Kunitsuko.

These Kuni no Miyakko, Country Rulers, were no mere Governors removable at the Imperial pleasure, or holding office for a term of years. They were real chieftains, heads of clans, who owned the soil on which they were settled. We have instances (under Yuryaku) of some small clans being extirpated, and probably in such cases their lands may very well have been seized by the Emperor. But in other instances where the chieftain was punished with death we know the lands were not confiscated; and in several places in the Nihongi we meet with mention of chiefs (Kunitsuko) purging themselves of offences against the sovereign by surrendering portions of their domains to him. As has been already remarked, the sovereign also acted as judge in cases of disputed succession to the headships of clans, and then it seems to have been customary for the successfulaspirant to surrender some of his estates with the serfs upon them to the sovereign as a sort of thank-offering. These were two of the three chief means of extending the Imperial territories.

A third was by the establishment of Be or Tomo. About this peculiar institution of ancient Japan, which was only abolished in 646, there is a great deal of obscurity. The words have sometimes been translated “clan” or “guild.” But the members of the Be or Tomo were connectedby no tie of blood relationship, while the son of the member of a medieval guild was not in all cases compelled to enter the guild. The nearest Western analogy to these is also, strangely enough, to be found in contemporary Europe, in the hereditary guilds of the later Roman Empire. Some of the Japanese Be of the fifth century were almost the exact counterpart of the Navicularii, the Pistores, the Suarii, the Pecuarii with whom the legislation of the Roman Emperors was so much concerned at that time.

These Be or Torno, or groups or corporations, were very numerous. The Nihongi constantly speaks of the 180 Be, but this is not to be taken literally; for one hundred and eighty was an ancient Japanese expression for “all” when the totality included a great many individuals whom it might have been tedious or impossible to enumerate. They seem to have existed for many purposes, to have been instituted on various pretexts and to have differed very widely in their memberships. We have details about the formation of the Fleshers’ Be under Yuryaku (458), which appears to have been originally composed of serfs presented by the Empress Dowager, the Omi, Muraji, Kuni no Miyakko, and the Tomo (or Be) no Miyakko. This special Be was doubtless meant to provide for the necessities of the Court exclusively, and was strictly local. A good many, perhaps most, Be stood on a somewhat similar footing. But there were others that were not merely local, but extended over the greater part of the Empire. For instance, in 480, the Emperor Seinei sent officers to establish three sets of Be in every province in order that the memory of his three childless consorts should be kept alive for ever. These were called the Be of Palace Attendants, of Palace Stewards, and of Palace Archers respectively, but they were really agricultural communities of serfs working estates the revenue of which was nominally to go to the maintenance of certain court functionaries and body-guards- Other agricultural corporations were established for purposes similar to that of our medieval manors assigned as ‘pin-money’ to queens and noble dames. On such occasions the Provincial magnates were expected to be complaisant enough to make over the necessary rice-fields or other lands and to donate the serfs needed for working them. It is not difficult to understand that a strong sovereign might have found this a very efficient device for extending the Imperial domains. Again, in Richu’s time (404 ad), we find the bead of the Carters’ Be proceeding from Yamato to Kyushu and holding a review of all the Carters’ Be in that island. Two great corporations were those of the Seamen and the Mountain Wardens. On several occasions we meet with these Be mobilised as formidable military forces; and that the latter corporation held lands of its own we know from an incident which occurred after the death of Ojin and before the accession of Nintoku. The heads of these corporations, although here­ditary, were originally appointed by the Emperor. In 400 AD Richu deposes Adzumi Muraji from the headship of the Sea­men’s Be in Awaji; however, a new head is not appointed, but the Be is broken up and the seamen made agricultural serfs on the Imperial estates in Yamato. In 485 Wodate, the official who had discovered the future Emperors Ninken and Kenzo serving as farm hands in Harima, on being asked to name his own reward, requested to be made chief of the Mountain-Warden Be. Thereupon the Emperor gave him the title of Yamabe no Muraji; the Omi of Kibi was associated with him, and the Yamamori Be (Mountain Warden’s Be) were made their serfs. Here the new head of the corporation is ennobled’ —i.e. becomes Muraji, it will be remarked—while the other head, the Omi of Kibi, a descendant of the Emperor Ojin, is also, of course, a noble. Over the Mountain-Wardens these heads exercised the power of life and death,—it was only after the Reform of 645 that the corporati were allowed to appeal from their chiefs to the (newly-established) Central Government. It will thus be seen that the chiefs of the Greater Corporations were very important men from the number of their dependants; and it is not so very strange to find the Rulers of Corporations (Tomo no Miyakko) ranking with the Country Rulers (Kuni no Miyakko). These Rulers of Corporations sometimes held large estates in various parts of the country ex officio, and in addition to this they were sometimes heads of clans, with their own tribesmen, really or theoretically connected with them by the blood-tie, at their beck and call. The Rulers of Corporations were neither serfs nor plebeians; at the lowest they were gentlemen ranking with the Country Rulers. On the other hand several of them were ennobled, bearing the titles of Omi and Muraji, while, as has just been said, others of them were at the same time not only heads of corporations of serfs but chieftains of clans as well. Many Japanese scholars maintain that it was only the sovereign who could create a Be. This contention at first sight seems to be invalidated by the fact that we find offending magnates compounding for their delinquency by making over certain Be to the Emperor. But bearing the origin of Yuryaku’s Fleshers’ Be in mind we can readily understand that what the offenders surrendered was merely land and people which the sovereign thereupon constituted a Be. The superintendents of the Imperial Agricultural Be in the outlying provinces appear in some cases to have developed into autonomous Country Rulers, or Group Rulers, if we are to believe the assertions of the legislators of 645-6. Even in the ninth and tenth centuries it sometimes took seven or eight weeks for a Governor to get from Tosa to Kyoto and twice or three times as long from Kyoto to the present Tokyo. The mere difficulties of communication muBt have made it no light task for even a strong central government to make its power felt in the more distant provinces. As a matter of fact the central government previous to 645 was exceedingly feeble,—even in Yamato and the surrounding districts it was far from being omnipotent. Accordingly its representatives,—the superintendents of the Imperial estates and of Imperial corporations—in the remoter portions of the Empire could safely conduct themselves very much as the heirs of Charlemagne’s local officers did under the laxly exercised authority of his degenerate successors. Thus the attempts to extend the Imperial domain in the outlying sections of the Empire, which might very well have proved effectual under a succession of able sovereigns, merely ended in a mushroom-like growth of new “Country” or “Group” Rulers, the more astute of whom were about 645 fortifying the autonomous position to which they either had attained, or were aspiring to, by recourse to forged and fictitious genealogies.

From all this the discerning reader will readily infer that in old Yamato there were really two partially antagonistic, partially complementary and interwoven social organisations in the field,—the clan system and the group or corporation system, to wit. In several instances chiefs of clans were also heads of corporations. But in most cases the heads of corporations stood opposed as a sort of rival aristocracy, or rather gentry, to the clan-chieftains.

One very peculiar and important, nay perhaps preponderant, factor in the corporation system was the immigrant and foreign element. From the very beginning of semi-authentic history we meet with numerous and unmistakeable indications of a steady and considerable influx of immigrants from the peninsular States which are now collectively known as Korea. The index to Mr Aston’s Nihongi is seriously defective, yet in it as it stands we meet with no fewer than twenty references to “Immigration into Japan” before 645 ad. Mimana, Silla, Pakche, Koguryu and China all alike contributed to the stream. In 289 (really 120 years later) we hear of Achi no Omi and his son bringing with them to Japan a company of their people of seventeen districts, and elsewhere we run across notices of whole villages crossing the sea from the peninsula. In addition to that there were numerous Chinese refugees. Under 540 we read that “the men of T'sin, and of Han, etc., the emigrants from the various frontier nations were assembled together, settled in the provinces and districts, and enrolled in the registers of population. The men of T‘sin numbered in all 7,053 houses.” Here a word of caution becomes necessary. A modern Japanese house is on the average composed of about five units. For fiscal purposes in 747 the normal Japanese house was supposed to consist of twelve individuals. And this seems to have been seriously under the truth. In 700 in a district in Mino one house had 94 inmates, another more than 50, several over 30, while the general average was 18. Thus seven thousand houses in ancient Japan would represent a very much greater fraction of the total population than it would nowadays. The T‘sin people, then, in all probability numbered something like 120,000, or 130,000. And besides them there were “the men of Han (also Chinese or Koreans of Chinese extraction ultimately) and the men of the frontier States.” All told, this alien population must have been a very numerous one. In a peerage of the early eighth century some 381 out of 1,177 nobles are assigned either a Korean or a Chinese origin. It is not probable that the Chinese and Korean leaven was as strong among the Japanese plebs as it was among the patricians; yet it seems somewhat beside the mark to assert, as is sometimes done, that these immigrants constituted “but a drop in the ocean” in the composition of the people of Japan.

These immigrants would naturally attach themselves to the Great Imperial Clan' and shelter themselves under its patronage and protection. The aristocrats among the new-comers were evidently treated as aristocrats from the very first. Doubtless a portion of the followings of these consisted of mere unskilled agricultural or common labourers, and these being neither necessary nor indispensable in Japan would sink into the general mass of serfs. But besides these there were bodies of skilled artificers and workmen plying handicrafts with which the Japanese were unacquainted. Their labour made this class of immigrant important; their presence in the land was felt to be necessary. Hence they had no difficulty in establishing themselves in a position of respect and consideration. They were in fact the “aristocrats of labour”; and their Be or corporations stood on a higher plane than the native Tomo. Among them, for example, were constituted at first two, and ultimately three, perhaps more, corporations of scribes, whose business it was to write and read dispatches for the sovereign, to manage his treasure-houses and keep his accounts, as well as those of the numerous Imperial granaries scattered over the Empire, and to record events. This of course was a position of great influence, and it is not strange to find several of these men treated as nobles.

It seems that these foreigners were mostly concentrated into two great settlements. The men of Han. known as the Eastern Aya, occupied a district in Yamato. In 472 their chief was made head of the whole community of Be among them. “The Emperor (Yuryaku) established their Tomo no Miyakko, granting him the title of Atahe.”

The T‘sin people, known as the Western Aya, had been es­tablished in Kawachi. These are more commonly met with under the name of Hada, a group of noble families, by the way, that claimed to be descended from Chi Hwangti, the Napoleon of China. Of these, under 471, we read:—“The Hada house was dispersed. The Omi and Muraji each enforced the services at pleasure, and would not allow the Hada no Miyakko to control them. Consequently, Sake, Hada no Miyakko, made a great grievance of this, and took office with the Emperor. The Emperor (Yuryaku) loved and favoured him, and commanded that the Hada house should be assembled and given to Lord Sako of Hada. So this Lord, attended by excellent Be workmen of 180 kinds, presented as industrial taxes fine silks which were piled up so as to fill the Court. Therefore he was granted a title—viz., Udzu Masa.”

It can readily be conceived that this foreign element, by attaching itself to the immediate fortunes of the Great Imperial Clan, became a strong support for the sovereign, and added vastly to his power. Indications are not lacking that it was the constant and consistent support of these alien communities that chiefly enabled Yuryaku to deal with opponents in the drastic fashion he did. Yuryaku was devoting much attention to the development of sericulture in Japan; and as the Hada people were experts in this, the Hada house was soon afterwards again dispersed in numerous settlements throughout the Empire as teachers and instructors. It was this house which under the name of Tsin we find to have numbered 7.053 families in the year 540. The men of Han, or the Yamato Aya, on the other hand, continued as a united community in their original settlement down to 645. On many occasions we find the Atahe, or head of these Yamato Aya, playing a very prominent role in political developments, and in 645 we find him and his people forming the last defence of the Soga, in the supreme crisis of their fortunes.