Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/50

 that the student will ever be in a position to decide these questions conclusively. He must be content for the present to regard the annals of primæval Japan as an assemblage of heterogeneous fragments from the traditions of South Sea islanders, of central Asian tribes, of Manchurian Tartars and of Siberian savages, who reached her shores at various epochs, sometimes drifted by ocean currents, sometimes crossing by ice-built bridges, sometimes migrating by less fortuitous routes.

What these records, stripped of all their fabulous features, have to tell is this:—

At a remote date, a certain race of highly civilised men—highly civilised by comparison—arrived at the islands of Japan. Migrating from the south, the adventurers landed on the Southern island, Kiushiu, and found a fair country, covered with luxurious vegetation and sparsely populated by savages living like beasts of the field, having no organised system of administration and incapable of offering permanent resistance to the superior weapons and discipline of the invaders, who established themselves with little difficulty in the newly found land. But on the main island two races of men very different from these savages had already gained a footing. One had its headquarters in the province of Izumo, and claimed sovereignty over the whole country. The other was concentrated in Yamato. Neither of these races knew of the other's existence, Izumo and