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Meanwhile the men of Choshiu, the declared adherents of the mikado, urged him to make a journey to Yamato, and thus show to his people that he was ready to take the field in person against the barbarians.

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."

An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when Yoshida Shoin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote on the eve of his execution the following stanza; "Full well I knew this course must end in death; It was Yamato spirit urged me on To dare whate'er betide."

As for the terracotta figures of human beings and sometimes of animals found in connexion with Yamato sepulchres, they convey little information about the racial problem.* The idea of substituting such figures for the human beings originally obliged to follow the dead to the grave seems to have come from China, and thus constitutes another evidence of intercourse, at least, between the two countries from very ancient times.

The mythological accounts of meetings of the Kami for purposes of consultation suggest a kind of commonwealth, and recall "the village assemblies of primitive times in many parts of the world, where the cleverness of one and the general willingness to follow his suggestions fill the place of the more definite organization of later times."* But though that may be true of the Yamato race in the region of its origin, the conditions found by it in Japan were not consistent with such a system, for Chinese history shows that at about the beginning of the Christian era the Island Empire was in a very uncentralized state and that the sway of the Yamato was still far from receiving general recognition.

The King decided that it was necessary to send an army to do battle with them and bring them to reason. But who was to lead the men? Prince Yamato Take at once offered to go and bring the newly arisen rebels into subjection.

The former version seems more consistent with the facts, and with the manner of the two princes' deaths, as described in the Records. Looking from the east coast of the island of Kyushu, the province of Yamato lies to the northeast, at a distance of about 350 miles, and forms the centre of the Kii promontory.

The Kwobetsu comprised all Emperors and Imperial princes from Jimmu downwards. This was the premier class. The Bambetsu ranked incomparably below either the Kwobetsu or the Shimbetsu. It consisted of foreigners who had immigrated from China or Korea and of aboriginal tribes alien to the Yamato race.

His name will occur again in this story. At this time there lived in the province of Yamato a certain Daimio, called Honda Dainaiki, who one day, when surrounded by several of his retainers, produced a sword, and bade them look at it and say from what smith's workshop the blade had come. "I think this must be a Masamuné blade," said one Fuwa Banzayémon.

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."