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This is the date assigned by the Japanese to their hero, Jimmu Tenno, the first mikado, the founder of an unbroken line. For several centuries, however, the history is open to question. The tenth mikado, Sujin, is noted as a reformer, and promoter of civilization. She suppressed a rebellion, and subdued Corea. Ojin, a celebrated warrior, is still worshiped as a god of war.
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.
Such an order of precedence offended the sovereign, and his Majesty proposed that the rank of dajo tenno should be given to his father, thus placing him in the position of a retired Emperor. Of course it was within the prerogative of the Emperor to confer titles.
Jimmu Tenno, the name of the conqueror, means "spirit of war," and so far victory had perched upon his banners as he marched. But now defeat came. The people of the great island fought fiercely for their homes and liberties, a brother of Jimmu was wounded, and he and his band of followers were driven back with loss.
Some groups were making arrangements for joint excursions in the Island Kingdom of Tenno; others discussed questions of finance and commerce, each one trying to impress his companions by a display of superior knowledge.
"Yamato" is the classic name for that part of Japan where the divinely honored Emperor, Jimmu Tenno, the founder of the dynasty and the Empire, first established his court and throne. "Damashii" refers to the soul, and especially to the noble qualities of the soul, which, in Japan of yore, were synonymous with bravery, the characteristic of the samurai.
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.
The "northern and southern Wo" were probably the kingdom of Yamato and that set up in Kyushu by Ninigi, a supposition which lends approximate confirmation to the date assigned by Japanese historians for the expedition of Jimmu Tenno. *This word was originally pronounced Wa, and is written with the ideograph signifying "dwarf."
The consequence was the civil war which broke out immediately after the death of Tenji Tenno, in A.D. 671, between that Emperor's brother and son, which only came to an end in 672 by the suicide of the latter. "In the eighth century, the Chinese costume and etiquette were adopted by the Court.
In the heart of all, from the Tenno to the lowest rickshaw coolie, there exists a jealous national consciousness, as natural as the beating of the heart itself, which unites the forces of religion, of the political idea and of intellectual culture into one indivisible element, differing in the individual only in intensity and in form of expression.
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