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However, he dissembled cleverly, and putting on a sweet air of shyness he approached the rebel chief with slow steps and eyes glancing like a frightened deer. Charmed to distraction by the girl's loveliness Kumaso drank cup after cup of wine for the pleasure of seeing her pour it out for him, till at last he was quite overcome with the quantity he had drunk.
The same fate seems to have befallen numerous captives made in the campaign against the Kumaso, and doubtless wholesale acts of self-destruction committed by Tsuchi-gumo and Kumaso when overtaken by defeat were prompted by preference of death to slavery.
There are no archaeological traces of the existence of the Kumaso or the Tsuchi-gumo, and however probable it may seem, in view of the accessibility of Japan from the mainland, not only while she formed part of the latter but even after the two had become separate, that several races co-existed with the Yemishi and that a very mixed population carried on the neolithic culture, there is no tangible evidence that such was the case.
They relate curtly that on his return from quelling the Kumaso the Emperor Keiko killed a Tsuchi-gumo in the province of Hizen. The truth seems to be that factitious import has been attached to the Tsuchi-gumo.
This campaign seems to have occupied ten years, and Yamato-dake was only thirty at the time of his death. He had marched against the Kumaso in the south at the age of sixteen.
*The Chronicles relate that when the Kumaso was struck down he asked for a moment's respite to learn the name of his slayer, whose prowess astounded him. The prince accepted the name, and then gave the Kumaso his coup de grace. It should be understood that these dates, being prehistoric, are not wholly reliable. Who, then, were they?
Nor does there appear to have been any collision between the two tides of immigrants, for the first appearance of the Kumaso in a truculent role was in A.D. 81 when they are said to have rebelled. The incident, though remote from the capital, was sufficiently formidable to induce the Emperor Keiko to lead a force against them in person from Yamato.
From the earliest eras, too, war might not be declared without an Imperial rescript, and to the Emperor was reserved the duty of giving audience to foreign envoys and receiving tribute. By foreign countries, China and Korea were generally understood, but the Kumaso, the Yemishi, and the Sushen were also included in the category of aliens.
The Yamato might sentence these people to serfdom among men of their own race, but they never would have condemned Japanese to such a position among the Yemishi. Evidently these "captives" were prisoners taken by the Yamato from the Koreans, the Sushen, or some other hostile nation. There has been some dispute about the appellation "Kumaso."
From them we gather that Chuai who was the second son of Yamato-dake and is described as having been ten feet high with "a countenance of perfect beauty" was a remarkably active sovereign. While in the latter province he received news of a revolt of the Kumaso, and at once taking ship, he went by sea to Shimonoseki, whither he summoned the Empress from Tsuruga.
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