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They further hold that when the Sun goddess detailed five Kami to form the suite of Ninigi, these Kami were entrusted with the ministerial duties originally discharged by them, and becoming the heads of five administrative departments, transmitted their offices to generation after generation of their descendants.
Finally they hold that Ninigi and these five adjunct Kami, though occupying different places in the national polity, had a common ancestor whom they jointly worshipped, thus forming an eternal union. IN considering the question of the origin of the Japanese nation four guides are available; namely, written annals, archaeological relics, physical features, and linguistic affinities.
What was originally involved in the conception of official functions, we learn from incidents prefatory to the expedition conducted by Ninigi for the subjugation of Japan. Finally, all military functions were committed to the chiefs, Oshihi and Kume, whose descendants constituted the Otomo and Kume families.
Those inhabiting the littoral districts were ultimately placed by Ninigi under the rule of Prince Hohodemi, and those inhabiting the mountain regions under the sway of Prince Hosuseri. The boats and hooks of the legend are symbolical of military and naval power respectively.
It will be observed that the two hypotheses are mutually conflicting, and that neither accounts for debarkation at a part of Tsukushi conspicuously remote from Korea. It is not wholly impossible, however, that Ninigi came from China, and that the Court which is said to have commissioned him was a Chinese Court.
The gist of the Japanese creed, as based on their ancient annals, may be briefly summarized. They hold that when the Sun goddess handed the three sacred objects to Ninigi generally called Tenson, or "heavenly grandchild" she ordained that the Imperial Throne should be coeval with heaven and earth.
The areas on which buildings stood were generally surrounded by palisades, and for a long time no other kind of defence save these palings seems to have been devised. In the instruction said to have been given by Amaterasu to her grandson Ninigi, on the eve of his expedition to Japan, the words are recorded: "My child, regard this mirror as you regard me.
This Nigihayahi had been despatched from the continental realm of the Yamato wherever that may have been at a date prior to the despatch of his younger brother, Ninigi, for the purpose of subjugating the "land of fair rice-ears and fertile reed plains," but of the incidents of his expedition history takes no notice: it merely shows him as ruling in Yamato at the time of Jimmu's arrival there, and describes how Nigihayahi, having been convinced by a comparison of weapons of war that Jimmu was of his own lineage, surrendered the authority to him and caused, Prince Nagasune to be put to death.
He sent with her a plentiful dower many "tables"* of merchandise but he sent also her elder sister, Enduring-as-Rock, a maiden so ill favoured that Ninigi dismissed her with disgust, thus provoking the curse of the Kami of mountains, who declared that had his elder daughter been welcomed, the lives of the heavenly sovereigns would have been as long as her name suggested, but that since she had been treated with contumely, their span of existence would be comparatively short.
The "northern and southern Wo" were probably the kingdom of Yamato and that set up in Kyushu by Ninigi, a supposition which lends approximate confirmation to the date assigned by Japanese historians for the expedition of Jimmu Tenno. *This word was originally pronounced Wa, and is written with the ideograph signifying "dwarf."
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