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I fulfil your praises, saying: As to the OFFERINGS set up, so that the sovran gods who come into the heavenly HOUSE of the Sovran GRANDCHILD'S augustness, which, after he had fixed upon as a peaceful country the country of great Yamato where the sun is high, as the centre of the countries of the four quarters bestowed upon him when he was thus sent down from heaven stoutly planting the HOUSE-pillars on the bottom-most rocks, and exalting the cross-beams to the plain of high heaven, the builders had made for his SHADE from the heavens and SHADE from the sun, and wherein he will tranquilly rule the country as a peaceful country may, without deigning to be turbulent, deigning to be fierce, and deigning to hurt, knowing, by virtue of their divinity, the things which were begun in the plain of high heaven, deigning to correct with Divine-correcting and Great-correcting, remove hence out to the clean places of the mountain-streams which look far away over the four quarters, and rule them as their own place.
The earliest type of the Yamato race having thus been military, it becomes important to inquire what tenets constituted the soldier's code in old Japan. Our first guide is the celebrated anthology, Manyo-shu, compiled in the ninth century and containing some poems that date from the sixth.
It is plain that these conditions cannot be reconciled except on one of two suppositions: either that the Takama-ga-hara of this section of the annals was in a foreign country, or that the descent of Ninigi in the south of Japan was in the sequel of a complete defeat involving the Court's flight from Yamato as well as from Izumo. Let us first consider the theory of a foreign country.
In their early opposition to Yamato aggression, the Yemishi or Ainu, or Yezo, by whatever name they be called displayed no fighting qualities that could be called formidable. Yet now, in the eighth century, they suddenly show themselves men of such prowess that the task of subduing them taxes the resources of the Yamato to the fullest.
Whatever obstacles they presented in the eighth century must have been equally potent in the second and in the seventh. Two explanations are offered. They are more or less conjectural. One is that the Yemishi of Mutsu were led by chieftains of Yamato origin, men who had migrated to the northeast in search of fortune or impelled by disaffection.
When Yamato Take heard this his wrath was kindled, and he said fiercely: "From the western end of Kiushiu to the eastern corner of Yezo I have subdued all the King's enemies there is no one who dares to break the laws or to rebel against the King.
The processes by which this change was evolved have already been explained in part and will be further elucidated as we advance. Here, however, it is advisable to note that this transfer of authority was, in one sense, a substitution of native civilization for foreign, and, in another, a reversion to the conditions that had existed at the time of the Yamato conquest.
He had proceeded to the pageant of opening a new bridge over the Sagami River, and it was popularly rumoured that he had fallen from his horse in a swoon caused by the apparition of Yoshitsune and Yukiiye on the Yamato plain and that of the Emperor Antoku at Inamura promontory. Just twenty years had elapsed since he raised the Minamoto standard in Sagami.
Leading a force into Yamato, he laid waste the land so that the "green mountains were changed into withered mountains," and the commotion throughout the country was like the noise of "flies swarming in the fifth month."
"If Japan can be said to have an official religion, it is Shintoism, not Buddhism, as so many Occidental people believe. Shintoism is ancestor-worship, and ascribes divinity to the emperor. They believe he is a direct descendant of the sun-god, Yamato." "Why, they're a heathen nation!" Kay's tones were indicative of amazement. Farrel smiled his tolerant smile.
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