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While touring in Kyushu several years ago, I had an experience which showed me that the stolidity, or vivacity, of a people is largely dependent on the prevailing social order rather than on inherent nature. Those who have much to do with the Japanese have noted the extreme quiet and reserve of the women. It is a trait that has been lauded by both native and foreign writers.
The bronze hand-weapons have been found in twelve provinces of southern and western Japan: namely, five provinces of northwest Kyushu; three on the Inland Sea; one facing Korea and China, and the rest on the islands of Iki and Tsushima.
Allowance has to be made, however, for the fact that the territory held by these Kumaso in the south of Kyushu was protected by a natural rampart of stupendous mountain ranges which rendered military access arduous, and which, in after ages, enabled a great feudatory to defy the Central Government for centuries.
This Tadafuyu was discharging his military duties in Bingo when news reached him of Moronao's coup d'etat in Kyoto and of his own patron, Tadayoshi's discomfiture. At once Tadafuyu crossed the sea to Higo in Kyushu, where a large number of discontented samurai rallied to his banner, and Shoni, the Ashikaga tandai of Kyushu, soon found himself vigorously attacked.
One of these is from the southwest of Kyushu via the Goto Islands to southeastern China; the other is from the south of Kyushu via the Ryukyu Islands, Formosa, and the Philippines to Malaysia and Polynesia. It has also been proved geologically* that the islands now forming Japan must at one time have been a part of the Asiatic continent.
This injunction was issued in 1280, and already steps had been taken to construct defensive works at all places where the Mongols might effect a landing at Hakozaki Bay in Kyushu; at Nagato, on the northern side of the Shimonoseki Strait; at Harima, on the southern shore of the Inland Sea; and at Tsuruga, on the northwest of the main island.
There now remained only three really formidable enemies of Hideyoshi. These were Hojo Ujimasa, in the Kwanto; Date Masamime, in Dewa and Mutsu, and Shimazu Yoshihisa, in Kyushu. Of these, the Shimazu sept was probably the most powerful, and Hideyoshi determined that Kyushu should be the scene of his next warlike enterprise.
At this point there is a break in the unrelenting continuity of the operations. It should obviously have been the aim of the Imperialists to strike a conclusive blow before the Ashikaga leaders had time to assemble and organize their multitudinous supporters in Shikoku, Kyushu, and the provinces on the north of the Inland Sea.
But my son lived and grew up handsome and strong; and when the Revolution came, he joined the armies of the Son of Heaven; and he died the death of a man in the great war of the South, in Kyushu. I loved him; and I wept with joy when I heard that he had been able to die for our Sacred Emperor: since there is no more noble death for the son of a samurai.
These localities and the fact that similar swords have been met with in Shantung, suggest that the bronze culture came from central and eastern Asia, which hypothesis receives confirmation from the complete absence of bronze vestiges in the southern provinces of Kyushu, namely, Osumi and Satsuma. Bronze bells, of which there are many, belong to a separate page of archaeology.
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