Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/55

 ideal exits from this mortal scene; deaths by the sword and deaths of loyal self-sacrifice. To the leader himself, after his decease, the posthumous name of Jimmu, or "the man of divine bravery," was given, typifying the honour that has always attached to the profession of arms in Japan. The distance from this primitive viking's starting-point to the place where he established his capital and consummated his career of conquest, can easily be traversed by a modern steamer in twice as many hours as the number of years devoted by Jimmu and his followers to the task. That the craft in which they travelled were of the most inefficient type, may be gathered from the fact that the viking's progress eastward would have been finally interrupted by the narrow strip of water dividing Kiushiu from the main island of Japan, had not a fisherman seated on a turtle emboldened him to strike sea-ward. Thenceforth the turtle assumed a leading place in the mythology of Japan,—the type of longevity, the messenger of the marine deity, who dwelt in the crystal depths of the ocean, his palace peopled by lovely maidens. The goddess of the sun shone on Jimmu's enterprise at times when tempest or fog threatened serious peril, and a kite, circling overhead, indicated the direction of inhabited districts when he and his warriors had lost their way among mountains and forests.

How much of all this was transmitted by tradition, written or oral, to the compilers of