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Updated: June 14, 2025
Every ancient nation has its legendary hero, who performs wonderful feats, dares fearful perils, and has not only the strength of man but the power of magic and the wiles of evil spirits to contend against. We give the story as it stands, with all its adventures and supernatural incidents. This Japanese hero of romance, born 71 A.D., was the son of Keiko, the twelfth in line of the mikados.
JAPAN. The authentic history of Japan belongs mainly in the modern period, since the tenth century A.D. The most ancient religion of Japan, designated by a term which means "the way of the gods," included a variety of objects of worship, gods, deified men, the mikados, or chief rulers, regarded as "the sons of heaven," animals, plants, etc.
To these questions the Japanese legend gives answer. When Heaven and earth were first created, there was neither Lake of Biwa nor Mountain of Fuji. Suruga and Omi were both plains. Even for long after men inhabited Japan and the Mikados had ruled for centuries there was neither earth so nigh to heaven nor water so close to the Under-world as the peaks of Fuji and the bottom of Biwa.
Ojin grew up and became a great warrior, invincible in battle and powerful in peace. He lived to be one hundred and eleven years old, and was next to the last of the long lived mikados of Everlasting Great Japan. To this day Japanese soldiers honor him as the patron of war, and pray to him as the ruler of battle.
There have been many Khedives, and many Mikados, but there can never be another Bernard Maddison." A disturbed shade seemed to fall upon the baronet's face. She followed his eyes, riveted upon the door. The hum of conversation had suddenly ceased, and every one was looking in the same direction.
This was worse than had been bargained for, and a contest ensued, which terminated in favor of the ex-Mikado, owing to the valor of a young warrior prince named Yoritomo. The prisoner was released, and himself assumed the regency; but from that moment the strength of the Mikados was gone.
They sought to combine the cults of Confucianism and Shinto, and to demonstrate that the Mikados were descendants of gods; that everything possessed by a subject belonged primarily to the sovereign, and that anyone opposing his Majesty's will must be killed, though his brothers or his parents were his slayers.
For a period of some twelve hundred years nearly all that we know of the mikados is that they "lived long and died happy." No fewer than twelve of these patriarchs lived to be over one hundred years old, and one held the throne for one hundred and one years.
The mikados began to abdicate after short reigns, to shave off their hair to show that they renounced the world and its vanities, to become monks and spend the remainder of their days in the cloister.
As he grew up, he was full of the Yamato Damashii, or the spirit of unconquerable Japan. This Takénouchi was a very venerable old man, who was said to be three hundred and sixty years old. He had been the counsellor of five mikados. He was very tall, and as straight as an arrow, when other old men were bent like a bow. He served as a general in war and a civil officer in peace.
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