Half -Light over Warm Seas in 



The history of Nippon must be broken down — at least from our 

 point of view — into five periods. First, there is the prehistoric, or 

 pre-Japanese, which came to an end about 600 B.C. and initiated 

 what may be called the Early Period. This lasted from 600 b.c. until 

 700 A.D. and is handed down to us more in myth than in solid record. 

 After that, the record becomes properly historic, but the country 

 remains obscure until 1600 a.d. when the Portuguese and Dutch 

 contacted the empire. After this, there was a period of almost three 

 hundred years during which the age-old traditions of the country 

 were perfected and novel ideas were considered but not employed. 

 After 1880 the country decided to join the comity of nations and 

 leaped ahead into the modern world of mechanical enterprise. From 

 the point of view of whaling this whole history can be divided into 

 a prehistoric, a Japanese, and a modern period when the Norwe- 

 gians arrived in their steam chasers. The industry was taken over in 

 1906 when the government banned foreigners from the business, 

 and then a primarily Japanese period lasted until the Second World 

 War. Since then, a most curious Americano-Nipponese effort has 

 developed, but this is of no concern to us. We pick up the story now 

 after the Japanese people have established themselves on the archi- 

 pelago of Nippon. 



Apparently, one of the staple diets of the aborigines had been 

 whale meat, and the new occupants of the islands adopted and con- 

 tinued this practice. This we know because we find them whaling 

 offshore very soon after they established themselves in this country. 

 Jimmo Tenno, or whoever he was, obviously had ships, otherwise 

 he could never have reached the islands or sailed from one of them 

 to conquer other parts. However, in 81 b.c. we find the Emperor 

 Sujin recording the fact that his maritime people, depending on 

 seafoods, lacked sufficient ships. As a result he ordered ships to be 

 built — and they were. Some scholars consider these to be the first 

 real ships, as opposed to mere boats, to be built in Nippon, but this 

 belief is decidedly doubtful. Nevertheless, there was obviously a 

 big push in shipbuilding in the time of that emperor. Then, in 

 200 A.D. the Empress Jingu caused a really vast fleet to invade Ko- 

 rea. This is the first indication of a Japanese naval eruption. Appar- 

 ently it was so impressive that the Koreans capitulated at once and 

 offered all manner of tributes and other bribes to get these new 



