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The Chinese, when they first took cognizance of the islands lying on their east, seem to have applied the name Wado pronounced "Yamato" by the Japanese to the tribes inhabiting the western shores of Japan, namely, the Kumaso or the Tsuchi-gumo, and in writing the word they used ideographs conveying a sense of contempt.
Here again certain points have to be noticed: that there were Tsuchi-gumo in Kyushu as well as in Yamato; that if one account describes them as pigmies, another depicts them as "mighty of frame," and that in Kyushu, as in Yamato, the Tsuchi-gumo had Japanese names. Only once again do the annals refer to Tsuchi-gumo.
The Imperial troops wove nets of dolichos, which they flung over them and then slew them." There are four comments to be made on this. The first is that the scene of the fighting was in Yamato. The third, that the presence of Tsuchi-gumo in Yamato preceded the arrival of Jimmu's expedition. And the fourth, that the Records are silent about the whole episode.
The Emperor, having commanded his generals to exercise the troops, Tsuchi-gumo were found in three places, and as they declined to submit, a detachment was sent against them. Concerning a fourth band of these defiant folk, the Chronicles say: "They had short bodies and long legs and arms. They were of the same class as the pigmies.
As for the things told in the Chronicles about short bodies, long limbs, pigmies, and nets of dolichos, they may be dismissed as mere fancies suggested by the name Tsuchi-gumo, which was commonly supposed to mean "earth-spiders."
These provinces were ruled by chieftainesses, who declared themselves loyal to the Imperial cause, and gave information about the haunts and habits of the "brigands," who in Suwo had no special appellation but in Buzen were known as Tsuchi-gumo, a name to be spoken of presently. They were disposed of partly by stratagem and partly by open warfare.
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.
If any inference may be drawn from the Chronicles' story, it is that there were Japanese in Yamato before Jimmu's time, and that Tsuchi-gumo were simply bands of Japanese raiders. Two bands of Tsuchi-gumo are mentioned as living there, and the Imperial forces had no little difficulty in subduing them. Their chiefs are described as "mighty of frame and having numerous followers."
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.
The first mention made of them in Japanese annals occurs in connexion with the slaughter of eighty braves invited to a banquet by the Emperor Jimmu's general in a pit-dwelling at Osaka.* The Records apply to these men the epithet "Tsuchi-gumo," whereas the Chronicles represent the Emperor as celebrating the incident in a couplet which speaks of them as Yemishi.
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