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Had not Chinese conservatism been imported into Japan and had it not received the homage of the bushi, independent development of original Japanese thought and of intellectual investigation might have distinguished the Yamato race.
After an interval of five years' aloofness, she presented a memorial on an unrecorded subject, and in the following year, she presented, once more, a gold image of Buddha, a gold pagoda, and a number of baptismal flags.* But Shiragi was nothing if not treacherous, and, even while making these valuable presents to the Yamato Court, and while despatching envoys in company with those from Mimana, she was planning another invasion of the latter.
In the reign of Emperor Gensei, there lived in the province of Yamato a Buddhist priest, Tokudo Shonin, who had been in a previous birth Hold Bosatsu, but had been reborn among common men to save their souls.
The plan pursued by the Yamato commanders was to build castles and barriers along the course of rivers giving access to the interior, as well as along the coast line. Taga Castle was the first of such works, and, by the year 767, the programme had been carried in Mutsu as far as the upper reaches of the Kitakami River,* and in Dewa as far as Akita.
Tools used in working metal are rarely found, a fact easily accounted for when we remember that such objects would naturally be excluded from sepulchres. There is another important relic which shows that the Yamato were "indebted to China for the best specimens of their decorative art."
It is curious that gems should have been profusely used for personal adornment in ancient times by people who subsequently eschewed the custom well-nigh altogether, as the Japanese did. It appears that when the Yamato immigrants reached Japan, the coast lands were overgrown with reeds and the greater part of the island was covered with primeval forests.
Only a little more than four miles from Port Arthur is the city of Dalney, also called Dairen. It is a beautiful little city of fifty or sixty thousand people with a good street car system and many modern buildings. On landing I went to the Yamato hotel and found comfortable quarters at a reasonable price. The South Manchurian railway operates a string of these Yamato hotels.
This request was complied with, and the newcomers were assigned dwellings at the village of Tsuno in Yamato;* but as the place proved unhealthy, they were afterwards distributed among several localities. *There were potters, saddlers, brocade-weavers, and interpreters. It is also recorded that, about this time, there came from China a man called An Kiko, a descendant of one of the Wu sovereigns.
The inference is that whatever the Yamato race may have been when it set out upon its original career of conquest, or when, in later eras, it sent great armies to the Asiatic continent, the close of the fifth cycle after the coming of Buddhism found the country reduced to a condition of comparative military weakness.
Scarcely eight years had elapsed from the time of Keiko's return to Yamato when they rebelled again, "making ceaseless raids upon the frontier districts;" and he sent against them his son, Yamato-dake; with a band of skilled archers. This youth, one of the most heroic figures in ancient Japanese history, was only sixteen.
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