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The Yamato might sentence these people to serfdom among men of their own race, but they never would have condemned Japanese to such a position among the Yemishi. Evidently these "captives" were prisoners taken by the Yamato from the Koreans, the Sushen, or some other hostile nation. There has been some dispute about the appellation "Kumaso."
The best authorities, however, interpret it in the latter sense for the purposes of the Izanagi-and-Izanami legend, and that interpretation is plainly consistent with the probabilities, for the immigrants would naturally have proceeded from Awaji to the Kii promontory, where the province of Yamato lies.
His last act was to present as slaves to the shrine of Ise the Yemishi who had originally surrendered and who had subsequently attached themselves to his person. They proved so noisy, however, that the priestess of the shrine sent them to the Yamato Court, which assigned for them a settlement on Mount Mimoro.
The conquering tribe of Yamato, having gradually obtained a rather imperfect supremacy over the other tribes in the middle and southern portions of the country now called the Empire of Japan, ruled them in the name of the Mikado. The second period begins in the seventh century, when the Japanese, copying the Chinese model, adopted a system of centralization.
Yet when Ninigi descends from Takama-ga-hara a descent which is described in one account as having taken place in a closed boat, and in another, as having been effected by means of the coverlet of a couch he is said to have landed, not in Izumo or in Yamato, but at a place in the far south, where he makes no recorded attempt to fulfil the purpose of his mission, nor does that purpose receive any practical recognition until the time of his grandson Iware.
These were the warriors, the conquerors of Japan, and afterwards the aristocracy, modified to some extent by mingling with a Mongoloid rank and file, and by a considerable addition of Ainu." He remarks that a white skin was the ideal of the Yamato, as is proved by their ancient poetry.
It must have been fully apparent to the great captains of the fourteenth century that Kyoto was easy to take and hard to hold. Lake Biwa and the river Yodo are natural bulwarks of Yamato, not of Yamashiro. Hiei-zan looks down on the lake, and Kyoto lies on the great plain at the foot of the hill.
This theory is based on the words of the address he made to his elder brothers and his sons when inviting them to accompany him on the expedition "Why should we not proceed to Yamato and make it the capital?" and on the fact that, on arriving in the Kibi district, namely, the region now divided into the three provinces of Bizen, Bitchu, and Bingo, he made a stay of three years for the purpose of amassing an army and provisioning it, the perception that he would have to fight having been realized for the first time.
This plot was frustrated by Oto's wife, Kusu, a woman too patriotic to connive at treason in any circumstances. She killed her husband, and the Court of Yamato was informed of these events. From that time, however, Japan's hold upon the peninsula was shaken. Yuryaku sent four expeditions thither, but they accomplished nothing permanent.
Japan has no more beautiful scene, and Yamato stood silently gazing over its broad expanse, the memory of his beloved wife, who had given her life for his, coming back to him as he gazed. These words still haunt that land. In the poet's verse that broad plain is to-day called Adzuma, and one of the great ships of the new navy of Japan is named Adzuma-kuan.
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