Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/94

 ries drawn from scorched bones, and that festivals in honour of the deities should be held in spring, in autumn, and at the close of the year. There is here too much similarity to be merely fortuitous. But as to the relations between the two nations, they were limited for a long time to mutual raids. In the century immediately preceding the Christian era, when the Japanese had been reduced almost to helplessness by a pestilence, the first historical reference to Korea is found, namely, that an incursion of Korean free-booters took place into the island of Kiushiu, and that thousands of the invaders settled in the deserted hamlets of the plague-stricken Japanese. Japan's attention was thus disagreeably directed towards her neighbour, and when, by and by, inter-tribal disputes disturbed the peace of Korea, the Yamato rulers were easily induced to interfere. It appears, further, that Korea constantly lent assistance to the semi-savage aborigines of Kiushiu, whose subjugation long remained a difficult problem for the Japanese. Indeed, the only questions of foreign policy with which the early Japanese colonists had to deal arose out of the fact that the autochthons whom they sought to bring under their sway, received aid in the south from Korea and in the north from the Tartars. There was not much probability that Japan would become a disciple of Korean ethics under such circumstances. Hence, though Korea and China are often bracketed together as Japan's instructors,