At Uda, on the east coast of the Yamato peninsula, [pg 055] there lived two brothers named Ukashi. The elder brother undertook to deceive Prince Jimmu, and set a trap in which to capture and slay him. But the younger brother revealed the plot, whereupon the followers of Prince Jimmu compelled the traitor to retreat into his own trap, where they killed him. The younger brother was honored and rewarded by Jimmu, and appears afterward among the hereditary princes of the country.
Again, as he was making his progress through the country Prince Jimmu came upon a company of the savages known as pit-dwellers,[48] whom the Kojiki calls earth-spiders, and describes them as having tails. There appear to have existed at this period remnants of these tribes as far south as the 35th parallel. At a later period they were driven out by the Ainos, and nothing but some of their relics now exists, even in Yezo. The peculiarity by which they were known was, that they lived in a sort of pit dug out of the earth in the sides of the mountains, over which they built a roof of limbs and grass. In the present case there were eighty of the warriors of this tribe. Prince Jimmu made a banquet for them in one of their pits and assigned an equal number of his own men to act as attendants. Each of these attendants was girded with a sword. Then from a post outside he sang a song,[49] and at a given signal [pg 056] in this song the eighty attendants fell upon the eighty earth-spiders and slew them all.
Thus having subdued all opposing forces and brought the country into subjection, Prince Jimmu established himself in a palace built for him at Kashiwara in the province of Yamato. This is usually regarded by Japanese historians as the beginning of the empire, and the present era[50] is reckoned from this establishment of a capital in Yamato. From the record of the length of the reigns of the several emperors contained in the Kojiki, and the Nihongi, and later books, the date of the accession of the Emperor Jimmu is fixed at 660 b.c. We have given elsewhere[51] our reason for believing the record of the early reigns of doubtful authenticity. Nevertheless, as it is impossible to propose a definite change, it is better to use the accepted scheme with its admitted defects.
The Emperor Jimmu after his accession continued to reign seventy-five years and, according to the Kojiki, died at the age of one hundred and thirty-seven. The Nihongi, however, gives his age at death as one hundred and twenty-seven, and this has been adopted by the government in its published chronology.[52] His burial place is said to be on the northern side of mount Unebi in the province of Yamato. It is just to assign to the Emperor Jimmu the exalted place which the Japanese claim for him in their history. That he was a prince of high enterprise is evident from his adventurous expedition from the home of his family into the barbarous and unknown regions of the Main island. He accomplished its conquest with less slaughter and cruelty than the customs of the times seemed to justify. He made it his policy to effect terms with the native princes and seek their co-operation in his government. He extended his sway so that it covered Anato, now known as Nagato, and Izumo on the west, and reached probably to Owari on the east. All this time he had held a firm hand on the island from which he had come, so that few if any outbreaks occurred among its restless Turanian or native inhabitants.
The Emperor Jimmu was succeeded by his third son, known by his canonical name as the Emperor Suizei. The reigning emperor, it seems, exercised the right to select the son who should succeed him. This was not always the oldest son, but from the time he was chosen he was known as taishi, which is [pg 058] nearly equivalent to the English term crown prince. The Emperor Suizei, it is said, occupied a palace at Takaoka, in Kazuraki, in the province of Yamato. This palace was not far from that occupied by his father, yet it was not the same. And in the reigns of the successive sovereigns down to a.d. 709, when the capital was for a time established at Nara, we observe it as a most singular circumstance that each new emperor resided in a new palace. In the first place, the palace spoken of in these early times was probably a very simple structure. Mr. Satow, in his paper[53] on the temples at Isé, gives an account of the form and construction of the prehistoric Japanese house. The Shintō temple in its pure form is probably a survival of the original palace. Before the introduction of edge-tools of iron and boring implements or nails, the building must have been constructed in a very primitive fashion. It will be understood that stone or brick were never used. Wood was the only material for the frame. The roof was thatched with rushes or rice straw. The pure Shintō temples of modern times are built with the utmost simplicity and plainness. Although the occasion for adhering to primitive methods has long since passed away, yet the buildings are conformed to the styles of structure necessary before the introduction of modern tools and appliances. To build a new palace therefore for a new emperor involved by no means such an outlay of time and work as might be imagined.
It is not improbable that when a young man was chosen crown prince he had an establishment of his own assigned to him, and this became his palace which he occupied when he became emperor. When a man died, and especially when an emperor died, it was an ancient custom to abandon his abode. It became unclean by the presence in it of a dead body, and therefore was no longer used.
Shinto Temple
Nothing is narrated of the immediate successors of the Emperor Jimmu of importance to this story. [pg 060] The accounts contained in either of the oldest histories relate merely to the genealogies of the several sovereigns.
The Emperor Suizei was, as we have seen, the third son of Jimmu and reigned thirty-two years, dying at the age of eighty-four.[54]