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Updated: May 24, 2025
Almost the whole of authentic Japanese history is comprised in one vast episode: the rise and fall of the military power.... It has been customary to speak of Japanese history as beginning with the accession of Jimmu Tenno, alleged to have reigned from 660 to 585 B.C., and to have lived for one hundred and twenty-seven years.
April 7 is looked upon as the anniversary of his accession to the throne, and is the Japanese national holiday, which is observed with public rejoicings and military and naval salutes. The year 1 was the year in which Jimmu ascended the throne. HOW CIVILIZATION CAME TO JAPAN: There is not much of absorbing interest in early Japanese history.
His line of march lay to Usa, in the district of Buzen; thence to Okada, where he took ship and made his way through the windings of the Suwo Nada, a part of the Inland Sea of Japan. Landing in Aki, Jimmu built himself a palace, and dwelt there for seven years, after which he sought the region of Bizen, where for eight years more he lived in peace.
A highly aristocratic Court, possessing one of the most complicated and jealously protected hierarchies in the world, and presided over by a monarch claiming direct descent from the sacred Jimmu Tenno of twenty-five hundred years ago, decrees to-day precisely as before, the elaborate ritual governing every move, every decision and every agreement.
It has been also shown above that, in the era prior to Jimmu, indications are found of intercourse between Japan and Korea, and even that Susanoo and his son held sway in Shiragi.
Day after day the booth was so full it was hardly possible to enter it, and what the neighbour foretold had come to pass, and Jimmu was a rich man. Yet he did not feel happy. He was an honest man, and he thought that he owed some of his wealth to the man from whom he had bought the kettle.
10 Anciently the two great Shinto festivals on which the miya were thus carried in procession were the Yoshigami-no-matsuri, or festival of the God of the New Year, and the anniversary of Jimmu Tenno to the throne. The second of these is still observed. The celebration of the Emperor's birthday is the only other occasion when the miya are paraded.
Now Jimmu had not gone very far before he felt that the kettle was getting heavier and heavier, and by the time he reached home he was so tired that he was thankful to put it down in the corner of his room, and then forgot all about it. In the middle of the night, however, he was awakened by a loud noise in the corner where the kettle stood, and raised himself up in bed to see what it was.
Korei, seventh in descent from Jimmu, held the sceptre from 290 to 215 B.C., and the seventy-second year of his reign fell, therefore, in 219 B.C. Now, to the east of the town of Shingu in Kii province, at a place on the seashore in the vicinity of the site of an ancient castle, there stands a tomb bearing the inscription "Grave of Hsu Fuh from China," and near it are seven tumuli said to be the burial-places of Hsu's companions.
That there was an actual Jimmu Tenno is more than any one can say. Of course the crow and kite, serpents and spiders, are myths, transformed, perhaps, from some real incidents in his career, and the gods that helped and hindered were doubtless born in men's fancies in later days. The Chinese have their story of how Japan was settled.
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