Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/277

Rh building and equipping of an industrial training school; the inauguration of sanitary works; the opening of hospitals and medical schools; the organization of an excellent educational system; the construction of waterworks in several towns; the complete remodelling of the central government; the differentiation of the court and the executive, as well as of the administration and the judiciary; the formation of an efficient body of police; the organization of law courts with a majority of Japanese jurists on the bench; the enactment of a new penal code; drastic reforms in the taxation system. In the summer of 1907 the resident-general advised the Throne to disband the standing army as an unserviceable and expensive force. The measure was doubtless desirable, but the docility of the troops had been over-rated. Some of them resisted vehemently, and many became the nucleus of an insurrection which lasted in a desultory manner for nearly two years; cost the lives of 21,000 insurgents and 1300 Japanese; and entailed upon Japan an outlay of nearly a million sterling. Altogether Japan was 15 millions sterling out of pocket on Korea’s account by the end of 1909. She had also lost the veteran statesman Prince Ito, who was assassinated at Harbin by a Korean fanatic on the 26th of October 1909. Finally an end was put to an anomalous situation by the annexation of Korea to Japan on the 29th of August 1910. (See further .) 

Cosmography.—Japanese annals represent the first inhabitant of earth as a direct descendant of the gods. Two books describe the events of the “Divine age.” One, compiled in 712, is called the Kojiki (Records of Ancient Matters); the other, compiled in 720, is called the Nihongi (Chronicles of Japan). Both describe the processes of creation, but the author of the Chronicles drew largely upon Chinese traditions, whereas the compilers of the Records appear to have limited themselves to materials which they believed to be native. The Records, therefore, have always been regarded as the more trustworthy guide to pure Japanese conceptions. They deal with the creation of Japan only, other countries having been apparently judged unworthy of attention. At the beginning of all things a primordial trinity is represented as existing on the “plain of high heaven.” Thereafter, during an indefinite time and by an indefinite process, other deities come into existence, their titles indicating a vague connexion with constructive and fertilizing forces. They are not immortal: it is explicitly stated that they ultimately pass away, and the idea of the cosmographers seems to be that each deity marks a gradual approach to human methods of procreation. Meanwhile the earth is “young and, like floating oil, drifts about after the manner of a jelly-fish.” At last there are born two deities, the creator and the creatress, and these receive the mandate of all the heavenly beings to “make, consolidate and give birth to the drifting land.” For use in that work a jewelled spear is given to them, and, standing upon the bridge that connects heaven and earth, they thrust downwards with the weapon, stir the brine below and draw up the spear, when from its point fall drops which, accumulating, form the first dry land. Upon this land the two deities descend, and, by ordinary processes, beget the islands of Japan as well as numerous gods representing the forces of nature. But in giving birth to the god of fire the creatress (Izanami) perishes, and the creator (Izanagi) makes his way to the under-world in search of her—an obvious parallel to the tales of Ishtar and Orpheus. With difficulty he returns to earth, and, as he washes himself from the pollution of Hades, there are born from the turbid water a number of evil deities succeeded by a number of good, just as in the Babylonian cosmogony the primordial ocean, Tiamat, brings forth simultaneously gods and imps. Finally, as Izanagi washes his left eye the Goddess of the Sun comes into existence; as he washes his right, the God of the Moon; and as he washes his nose, the God of Force. To these three he assigns, respectively, the dominion of the sun, the dominion of the moon, and the dominion of the ocean. But the god of force (Sosanoo), like Lucifer, rebels against this decree, creates a commotion in heaven, and after having been the cause of the temporary seclusion of the sun goddess and the consequent wrapping of the world in darkness, kills the goddess of food and is permanently banished from heaven by the host of deities. He descends to Izumo on the west of the main island of Japan, and there saves a maiden from an eight-headed serpent. Sosanoo himself passes to the under-world and becomes the deity of Hades, but he invests one of his descendants with the sovereignty of Japan, and the title is established after many curious adventures. To the sun goddess also, whose feud with her fierce brother survives the latter’s banishment from heaven, the idea of making her grandson ruler of Japan presents itself. She despatches three embassies to impose her will upon the descendants of Sosanoo, and finally her grandson descends, not, however, in Izumo, where the demi-gods of Sosanoo’s race hold sway, but in Hiūga in the southern island of Kiūshiū. This grandson of Amaterasu (the goddess of the sun) is called Ninigi, whose great-grandson figures in Japanese history as the first human sovereign of the country, known during life as Kamu-Yamato-Iware-Biko, and given the name of Jimmu tennō (Jimmu, son of heaven) fourteen centuries after his death. Japanese annalists attribute the accession of Jimmu to the year 660 Why that date was chosen must remain a matter of conjecture. The Records of Ancient Matters has no chronology, but the more pretentious writers of the Chronicles of Japan, doubtless in imitation of their Chinese models, considered it necessary to assign a year, a month, and even a day for each event of importance. There is abundant reason, however, to question the accuracy of all Japanese chronology prior to the 5th century. The first date corroborated by external evidence is 461, and Aston, who has made a special study of the subject, concludes that the year 500 may be taken as the time when the chronology of the Chronicles begins to be trustworthy. Many Japanese, however, are firm believers in the Chronicles, and when assigning the year of the empire they invariably take 660 for starting-point, so that 1909 of the Gregorian calendar becomes for them 2569.

Prehistoric Period.—Thus, if the most rigid estimate be accepted, the space of 1160 years, from 660 to  500, may be called the prehistoric period. During that long interval the annals include 24 sovereigns, the first 17 of whom lived for over a hundred years on the average. It seems reasonable to conclude that the so-called assignment of the sovereignty of Japan to Sosanoo’s descendants and the establishment of their kingdom in Izumo represent an invasion of Mongolian immigrants coming from the direction of the Korean peninsula—indeed one of the Nihongi’s versions of the event actually indicates Korea as the point of departure—and that the subsequent descent of Ninigi on Mount Takachiho in Hiūga indicates the advent of a body of Malayan settlers from the south sea. Jimmu, according to the Chronicles, set out from Hiūga in 667 and was not crowned at his new palace in Yamato until 660. This campaign of seven years is described in some detail, but no satisfactory information is given as to the nature of the craft in which the invader and his troops voyaged, or as to the number of men under his command. The weapons said to have been carried were bows, spears and swords. A supernatural element is imported into the narrative in the form of the three-legged crow of the sun, which Amaterasu sends down to act as guide and messenger for her descendants. Jimmu died at his palace of Kashiwa-bara in 585, his age being 127 according to the Chronicles, and 137 according to the Records. He was buried in a kind of tomb called misasagi, which seems to have been in use in Japan for some centuries before the Christian era—“a highly specialized form of tumulus, consisting of two mounds, one having a circular, the other a triangular base, which merged into each other, the whole being surrounded by a moat, or sometimes by two concentric moats with a narrow strip of land between. In some, perhaps in most, cases the misasagi contains a large vault of great unhewn stones without mortar. The walls of this vault converge gradually towards the top, which is roofed in by enormous slabs of stone weighing