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Owing to this feud among her generals, Japan's hold on Mimana became more precarious than ever while her prestige in the peninsula declined perceptibly. Nevertheless her great military name still retained much of its potency. Thenceforth Yuryaku aided Kudara zealously.
It is certainly eloquent of the Yamato Court's magnanimity that it should have welcomed immigrants from a country with which it was virtually at war. Two years later , Shiragi and Mimana, acting in concert, sent envoys who were received with all the pomp and ceremony prescribed by Shotoku Taishi's code of decorum.
In that year, a section of the Kudara people, who, in 477, had been driven from their country by the Koma invaders and had taken refuge within the Japanese dominion of Mimana, were restored to their homes with Japanese co-operation and with renewal of the friendly relations which had long existed between the Courts of Yamato and Kudara. Three years later , Kudara preferred a singular request.
The art of applying glaze to ceramic manufactures was not discovered until a much later period. In the year 463, Yuryaku, desiring to possess himself of the wife of a high official, Tasa, sent him to be governor of Mimana, and in his absence debauched the lady. Tasa, learning how he had been dishonoured, raised the standard of revolt and sought aid of the Shiragi people.
Six months after his invasion of Mimana he renewed the despatch of envoys to Japan, and it was not until their arrival in Yamato that they learned Japan's mood. Much to the credit of the Yamato Court, it did not wreak vengeance on these untimely envoys, but immediately afterwards an armed expedition was despatched to call Shiragi to account.
Shiragi did not attempt to resist. The King tendered his submission and it was accepted without a blow having been struck. But there were no tangible results. Japan did not attempt to re-establish her miyake in Mimana, and Shiragi refrained from sending envoys to Yamato except on special occasions.
Such, doubtless, was the attitude assumed by several of the Imperial descendants who had obtained provincial estates. His mission had proved abortive, but the Emperor Suinin, Sujin's successor, gave him some red-silk fabrics to carry home and conferred on his country the name Mimana, in memory of Sujin, whose appellation during life had been Mimaki.
The general whom she sent with five hundred warships to escort the Kudara envoys was ignominiously defeated by the men of Habe, while Shiragi seized the opportunity to invade Mimana and to occupy a large area of its territory. For several years the Yamato Court made no attempt to re-assert itself, but in 527 an expedition of unprecedented magnitude was organized.
It consisted of sixty thousand soldiers under the command of Keno no Omi, and its object was to chastise Shiragi and to re-establish Mimana in its original integrity. But here an unforeseeable obstacle presented itself. A knowledge of his mood was conveyed to Shiragi, and tempting proposals were made to him from that place conditionally on his frustrating the expedition under Keno no Omi.
The Yamato Court at once despatched a force of ten thousand men to Mimana's aid, and Shiragi, having suffered a signal defeat, made act of abject submission, restoring to Mimana six of its original provinces and promising solemnly to abstain from future hostilities. The Japanese committed the error of crediting Shiragi's sincerity.
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