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In these circumstances, the ministers held a council and agreed to offer the throne to Inkyo, the elder of two surviving sons of Nintoku. Inkyo was suffering from a disease supposed to be incurable, and, distrusting his own competence, he persistently refused to accept the responsibility.

*Doubts have been thrown on the reality of this incident because a poem, attributed to Nintoku on the occasion, is couched in obviously anachronistic language. But the poem does not appear in either the Records or the Chronicles: it was evidently an invention of later ages.

During the reign of Nintoku, when envoys from Koma presented to the Court iron shields and iron targets, a Japanese archer, Tatebito, was able to pierce them; and in the time of Yuryaku, a rebel named Iratsuko shot a shaft which, passing through his adversary's shield and twofold armour, entered the flesh of his body to the depth of an inch.

In short, the method of government inaugurated at the foundation of the empire appears to have been essentially feudal in practice, though theoretically no such term was recognized; and at a later period apparently about the time of Nintoku when the power of the hereditary miyatsuko threatened to grow inconveniently formidable, the device of reasserting the Throne's authority by appointing temporary provincial governors was resorted to, so that the prefectural organization came into existence side by side with the feudal, and the administration preserved this dual form until the middle of the seventh century.

It is not known even at what date the office of kokushi was established. The first mention of these officials is made in the year A.D. 374, during the reign of Nintoku, but there can be little doubt that they had existed from an earlier date.

The rescript justified Asuka's elevation by reference to the case of Iwa, a daughter of the Takenouchi, whom the Emperor Nintoku had made his Empress. But the Takenouchi family belonged to the Kwobetsu class, and the publication of a special edict in justification could be read as self-condemnation only. Nevertheless, the Fujiwara had compassed their purpose.

Hence when it is said that the Emperor Nintoku remitted all taxes for the space of three years until the people's burdens were lightened, reference is made only to the be and tomobe belonging to the Throne itself.

Thus Yuryaku is shown as "ordering commissioners to erect a lofty pavilion in which he assumes the Imperial dignity," and the Emperor Nintoku is represented as "ascending a lofty tower and looking far and wide" on the occasion of his celebrated sympathy with the people's poverty. The 22nd Sovereign, Seinei A.D. 480-484 " 23rd " Kenso " 485-487 " 24th " Ninken " 488-498 " 25th " Muretsu " 499-506

The same Chronicles make him the lover of a girl whom his father, also her lover, generously ceded to him. This event happened in A.D. 282. Assuming that Nintoku was then sixteen, he cannot have been less than 133 at the time of his death. It is thus seen that the chronology of this period, also, is untrustworthy.

Thus, the Emperor known to posterity as Jimmu was called Iware in life, the Emperor named Homuda while he sat on the throne is now designated Ojin, and the Emperor who ruled as Osazaki is remembered as Nintoku. In the Imperial family, and doubtless in the households of the nobility, wet-nurses were employed, if necessary, as also were bathing-women, washing-women, and rice-chewers.